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THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM. 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS EXPE- 
RIENCE. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 



THE HIGHER 
INDIVIDUALISM 



BY 



EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN UNIVERSITY 

OF CHICAGO, AND PASTOR OF HYDE PARK CHURCH 

OF DISCIPLES OF CHRIST, CHICAGO 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1915 






COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published February IQ15 



FE8 25 I9J5 

§ CIA 391 867 



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TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER 
REV. LUCIUS AMES 



PREFACE 

These sermons were delivered in Appleton 
Chapel of Harvard University, during 1912-13 
and 1913-14, in the periods of the author's service 
as a member of the Board of Preachers to the 
University. 

Though not conceived with reference to a gen- 
eral plan, the sermons express certain fundamen- 
tal ideas characteristic of the constructive tend- 
ency in current religious thinking. Among these 
ideas are the social nature of the individual and 
the value of social service; the charm of the nearer 
view of Jesus ; the naturalness and accessibility of 
the central religious experiences, such as regen- 
eration, inspiration, and the mystical moods ; and 
the world-old quest for a more abundant and a 
more ideal life. 



CONTENTS 

The Higher Individualism 1 

Christianity and Social Service 21 

The Joy of Jesus 43 

The Cloud of Witnesses 65 

Regeneration 89 

Religion as the Quest for Life 109 

What is the Word of God ? 125 

The Mystical Quality in Religion 145 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. 1 Cor. 
xn, 27. 

In the depths of every normal, vigorous human 
being is a powerful impulse to possess and to pre- 
serve his own personality, to maintain his iden- 
tity, to be himself, to be some one in particular. 
It is the expression of the will to live, manifested 
in acts of self-defense in the presence of danger, 
and in the self-assertion of appetite, acquisitive- 
ness, curiosity, and growth. This will to live 
gives rise to various kinds of individualism. 

In its most elemental form it is an individualism 
self -centered, grasping, and tyrannical. It grows 
by conquest and assimilation. It is seen in the 
animal world among those species which live so 
much in isolation and prey upon others, as do the 
lion and tiger. It is also the law of the jungle that 
the herd and the pack shall be ruled and led by 
the fleetest runner and the fiercest fighter. He 
reigns supreme so long as he can make his kill and 
subdue all rivals. Much of human society has 
been of that pattern, enabling one or a few power- 
3 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

ful men to dominate the mass. The names of 
Nero and Napoleon have become symbols of this 
pride and lust of power. The motto of such in- 
dividualism is that might makes right, and its 
philosophy is a crude doctrine of the superman, 
and of the survival of the fittest. But it is an in- 
dividualism which everywhere tends to defeat 
itself, for any conspicuous examples of it create 
envy and conflict. The same craving for self- 
assertion and power stirs in all classes of men and 
asserts itself after every tyranny by revolution 
and reprisal, or by some wiser and more compre- 
hensive individualism. This is true not only in 
the state, but also in industry and in all forms of 
social organization. Children who are made too 
subservient to a repressive authority at home are 
likely to become bullies and dictators in their play 
and work. 

Corresponding to this individualism of might, 
whether based upon physical force, or caste, or 
wealth, there has been throughout the history of 
civilization an individualism of renunciation, of 
self-abnegation. Asceticism has this motive. Re- 
garding the world as evil and human contact as 
contaminating, it takes its precious self out of so- 
ciety and away from its contagion. But this kind 
4 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

of asceticism is not now so much in vogue. We are 
beset by a more self-indulgent and luxurious re- 
tirement from the world which exercises extreme 
care and cleverness in carrying away most of the 
comforts and few of the disturbances of organized 
society. The news service and rapid transit make 
it possible to satisfy one's human curiosity and 
one's creature cravings without bearing the respon- 
sibility of voting in the city elections or doing 
jury service or sharing at close range the actual 
life of more than a few persons. There is constant 
protest against the increasing regulation of busi- 
ness and industry and personal conduct. Our per- 
sonal liberty, it is claimed, is curtailed and en- 
dangered. A noted educator recently called upon 
university men, especially, to exert their influence 
against such over-regulation. But the average 
man easily escapes that inconvenience. In the 
midst of cities, with multitudes of human beings 
in adjacent spaces, he may yet experience the 
deepest solitude, a solitude which may be more 
complete than that of state prisons or of ancient 
monasteries. For in the monasteries, at least, 
there were some communal tasks and some com- 
mon assemblies. In the modern city people tend 
to become, in large measure, mere physical ob- 
5 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

jects to one another. In the street cars they glance 
up indifferently from behind their newspapers. 
There is little joy of comradeship or of mutual 
acquaintance. In and out of the throng a man 
may go and come, abstracting from it, for a price, 
whatever he craves, without binding himself to 
any serious relationships or permanent associa- 
tions. It is the boarding-house attitude toward 
life so well illustrated in the first act of the play, 
"The Passing of the Third Floor Back." 

One often hears the theory of individualism cal- 
culated to fit this manner of life. It is said that 
one should develop his own personality and 
should cultivate originality and novelty more 
than is possible if one identifies himself closely 
with social organizations and institutions. 

Modern civilization is represented as vulgar- 
ized by uniformity and monotony. They say it is 
dominated by the machine, the symbol of repe- 
tition and duplication. A huge printing-press or 
steel die produces innumerable copies of the same 
design with the utmost precision and speed. 
Everything is standardized and labeled. Clothing 
and furniture are ready-made, and our very bread 
and butter bear the shape and form of the moulds. 
And human life is not exempt. Even the public 
6 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

schools boast in some States, as if it were an end 
in itself, that at any moment of the day the super- 
intendent knows that all the thousands of pupils 
in a given grade are engaged upon exactly the 
same task. The Church, too, it is alleged, offers 
a prescribed set of doctrines and a preconceived 
type of "experience" to which all individuals are 
required to conform. 

In protest against all this the individualist 
clings to separateness and isolation, in order that 
institutions may not close in upon him and dwarf 
his powers. He feels that participation in organi- 
zations means suppression, conformity to type, the 
duplication of a set pattern. Nothing seems so 
deadening as imitation, as the control of custom 
and convention. I recently heard a man inveigh 
against all uniforms for street-car men, messenger 
boys, and nurses, on the ground that they obscure 
the individual, lessen his self-respect and swallow 
him up in a vast impersonal system. His assump- 
tion was that an institutional system is always 
hard and exacting, demanding everything and 
affording nothing human and ennobling in re- 
turn. In so far as institutions are of that nature, 
they do obscure and deaden individual talent and 
initiative, and men will continue to loathe and to 
7 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

exploit them. But individualism which consists 
in this conscious opposition and negation of 
social relations always tends to be shallow and 
fantastic and unhappy. It mistakes eccentricity 
for genius, and mere divergence for advance- 
ment. 

The individualism suggested by the apostle 
Paul in his letter to the Corinthians is of another 
kind. It does not consist in dominating others, or 
in having as little as possible in common with 
them, but it is marked by the fullest and most in- 
timate association. It is the Pauline conception 
of being members of the body of Christ. This 
is often interpreted to mean that the individual 
members are subordinate to the body as a whole, 
as if the emphasis fell upon magnifying the 
Church. But it is also possible to discover here 
a new evaluation of the individual through his 
function as an organ of the body. "Now ye are 
members of the body of Christ, and members in 
particular." "Members in particular" describes 
a higher individualism, achieved through inter- 
dependence and mutual support. It is not the 
surrender of one to another, or the monotonous 
repetition of the same function, but it is the ad- 
justment and development of each part through 
8 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

its own peculiar relation to every other part. This 
enrichment of the individual by social interaction 
has sometimes been overlooked through the direc- 
tion of attention to the social whole. But it is of 
the highest significance, while realizing the impor- 
tance of the larger social organism, to keep in mind 
also the individual development which each mem- 
ber attains in and through it. 

The simplest social transactions show that all 
parties involved are required, by the nature of the 
service they render one another, to maintain their 
individual character and function. When a cus- 
tomer enters a store to make a purchase, the clerk 
does not become an automaton or an imitator. 
It is his business, in answer to inquiries, to display 
the goods, to make explanations in answer to 
questions, to interrogate the customer in turn for 
further information, and to play his own special 
part with judgment and initiative. His responses 
are scarcely the same with any two customers 
throughout the day, for he is cooperating succes- 
sively with different persons to supply their vary- 
ing wants. And the clerk is not the only one who 
responds to the customer's need. Beyond him, 
in turn, are the cashier and the wrapping clerk 
and the delivery boy, and more remotely the floor 
9 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

walker, the manager, the buyer, the proprietor, 
and the rest. All cooperate to serve the customer, 
yet no two of them perform the same act. The 
deed of each is a signal for a different deed by the 
next in line through the entire system. 

The contribution of team play to the individu- 
alism of all members of the team illustrates the 
same principle. We have magnified team work as 
if any particular player were quite lost in the 
larger unit. But in fact no member surrenders 
his individuality. The very ground of his success 
is to do with all his might his particular duty, and 
that duty is different from the duty of any other. 
Every man must keep his eye on the ball, but with 
a view to a possible course of action determined 
by his own unique position and function. So indi- 
vidualistic do the members of the most efficient 
teams become that expertness in one place is 
scarcely any guaranty of success in another. In- 
deed, — and this proves the utter refinement of 
individualism within a developed social group, — 
the very power and technique which a man at- 
tains in a given position often literally unfits him 
for like success in any other position in his group. 
The tendency is for the members of the team to 
become more and more differentiated from one 
10 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

another and at the same time mutually more in- 
terdependent. 

The same condition obtains in modern society, 
whose great men are the specialists, the experts. 
They are representatives of the highest individu- 
alism. They develop only in a highly organized 
social order and they cannot function apart from 
it. They are members of the corporate organism, 
and they are members in particular. When a man 
in an undeveloped society dies, it is not difficult to 
find another man to take his place; but when a 
man of the higher civilization dies, his personality 
cannot be replaced. Other men may bear the 
same official title and the same insignia of honor, 
but they cannot be what the first man was. Not 
only our poets and artists and inventors, but our 
statesmen and our merchants and our soldiers, 
have been unique and original. This is not be- 
cause they stood aloof from their time and from 
their fellows, but precisely because they entered 
so deeply into the common life and fulfilled their 
manifold relations so completely. No men have 
been at once such typical and such exceptional 
Americans as Ben Franklin and Abraham Lin- 
coln. They cannot be thought of as trying to 
make themselves different. On the contrary they 
11 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

were always losing themselves in the common 
cause. They were literally the servants of all, and 
just by virtue of serving all their countrymen they 
developed many-sided, profoundly distinguished 
characters. 

The same great law was fulfilled in the life of 
Jesus, and is the source of his inexhaustible at- 
tractiveness and charm. There is always some- 
thing wonderfully appealing yet elusive about the 
personality of Jesus. He was not like any one 
else, and yet he was like everybody. His words 
were so true to human experience that they might 
have been said by any one. Yet their very 
obviousness and convincing quality made them 
different, added something indescribable and 
immeasurable, which distinguished him from his 
predecessors, from his disciples, and from all the 
rest of the world before and since his time. The 
people who heard him were astonished at his doc- 
trine, and the people of our own time still marvel 
at his simple yet fathomless words. There he 
stands a plain peasant of Galilee, a carpenter's son, 
a friend of publicans and sinners, speaking from 
the clear pictures of life mirrored in his pure, deep 
soul. No one can misunderstand them and no one 
can exhaust their meaning. He is the embodiment 
12 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

of the genius of his people, the focus of a world of 
spiritual forces and the radiating center of crea- 
tive moral energy and truth. 

Some one has suggested that the personality of 
different men might be represented by a great 
system of electric lamps. When the current is 
turned on to represent a given man, it not only 
illuminates the bulb which bears his name, but a 
glow lightens all the lamps which designate the 
lives interwoven with his own. Thus each per- 
son's character traces its own figure, no one being 
entirely limited to a single point, while the greatest 
individuals extend circles upon circles, and lines 
upon lines of light. 

An external account of a man's lineage and 
training may give only slight clues to the fullness 
and complexity of his nature. The living world of 
his imagination, his interior responsiveness to life, 
may enfold less intimately the companion at his 
side than it does some sage of the distant past or 
the dream face of some poet's song. The whole 
environment is therefore different for various per- 
sons. No two strike life at the same angle and no 
two get the same response. The more complex 
society becomes, the greater are the variations 
within this interior, spiritual experience. Any 
13 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

outward uniformities which convenience and com- 
fort may impose for the general good do not lessen 
this larger freedom. Often they enhance it, as 
when the Government fixes a uniform postal rate 
for great and small citizens alike, and thereby 
opens thoroughfares for new movements of spirit- 
ual energy. In these higher ranges of association 
no individual is a mere copy of any other. Imita- 
tion is impossible not only because of difference 
in inherited capacity, but because a living organ- 
ism differentiates all its members by the functions 
they perform. The two hands cannot wear the 
same glove. The two ears experience varying in- 
tensity of sound. The two eyes receive different 
rays of light. 

There are sayings of Jesus which indicate 
something more than imitation as the principle 
of his fellowship. He said, "I call you no longer 
servants but friends," and the very essence of 
friendship is the interplay of minds not entirely 
alike, a real give-and-take of experience. That 
friendship grew with the tasks the disciples per- 
formed and with the dangers and perplexities 
they confronted, yet each bore his own cross and 
was responsible for the investment of his peculiar 
talents. 

14 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

But it is especially in the letters of the apostle 
Paul that this higher individualism receives its 
fullest religious exemplification and interpreta- 
tion. To him the followers of Christ are fused into 
a living body, a spiritual society, an ideal king- 
dom. Such a society became actual and visible in 
every city of the Roman world where he gathered 
converts and organized a church. Each group was 
in miniature and ideally what all of them together 
were conceived to be in their united, corporate 
character. Each was the symbol of the body of 
Christ within which every member had his place 
and function. These functions were the natural 
divisions of labor, such as administration, teach- 
ing, preaching, and healing. And the apostle vir- 
tually took up all natural, social relations into 
this religious life, for he exhorts husbands and 
wives, children and servants and masters and busi- 
ness men, to fulfill their duties as religious obli- 
gations, "as unto the Lord." Nothing could be 
clearer than his insistence upon the community 
of interest which all share and the distinctness 
and identity of each member. The body is one 
organism, animated by one spirit. The individ- 
ualism which the members attain is not that of 
independence of each other, "for the eye cannot 
15 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

say unto the hand, I have no need of thee." Nor 
is it an individualism in which one member ignores 
or disdains the others, "for the body is not one 
member, but many." 

The Church thus conceived is a great dynamic 
society organized to overcome the evil forces of 
the world, to battle against spiritual wickedness 
and the powers of darkness. In its warfare each 
member has his duty to perform. To be efficient 
he must learn to work with others, to develop 
the special function for which he is fitted, and 
to bear whatever part the struggle may thrust 
upon him. It is only by this sense of organic 
relation to the whole reality of life that a man 
feels his essential worth and dignity. In some 
sense every moral person does feel his conduct 
to have absolute and final value. The teacher, 
at his best, has a sense that his work is of 
crucial significance. To impart an untruth or a 
flippant word when an earnest, serious message is 
demanded, is to break faith with the universe. 
Whereas to utter a tested and illuminating truth 
is to become a co-worker with the soul of things 
and to feel the pull of the anchor on the solid rock. 

When the captain of a great ship stands on the 
bridge in the hour of danger, he is conscious that 
16 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

destiny hangs upon his quick perception and de- 
cision. Human beings are aboard who have 
entrusted themselves to his care. No one else can 
take his place or answer for his deed. He stands 
there with the weight of the world upon him. It 
is the moment which has haunted his imagination 
ever since he went to sea. In the crisis of events 
everything is in his hand. His life is magnified, 
not because he is alone, but because he is the focus 
of a vast system of human values and forces of 
nature. To succeed at his task in such an hour is 
to be the bearer of life to the world; but to fail is 
to be overwhelmed in the storm and darkness. 

In similar manner ordinary persons engaged 
in the real work of life have the thrill and the 
stress of great responsibility by virtue of their 
participation in a complex system of industry or 
administration. It is appalling to realize what 
trusts are committed to the obscure railway 
switchman, the turn of whose hand, or whose mis- 
judgment of a signal, may wreck a train. Or think 
what decrees of fate lie in a mother's care or 
neglect of her child. 

Yet in their deepest natures men crave this 
tang and terror of real life. They cannot be satis- 
fied apart from the great social organism. Nothing 
17 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

is so gruesome as an eye or a hand separated from 
the body, and every sane man shudders to think 
of himself in lonely and useless isolation. That is 
the pang of the lost. Hell is the place of outer 
darkness where everything is swallowed up in 
chaos and night, and the souls of the damned 
wander in perpetual solitude. 

Only a little less severe punishment is it to have 
instruments and tools and never be allowed to 
lay one's hand to their real use in the world. To 
work at a telegraph key which is never connected 
with the actual wires, or to speak into a discon- 
nected telephone, or, like a child, to hold the 
ends of the reins where one cannot really guide 
the horses, is to suffer utter emptiness and de- 
tachment. 

It is on this account that men really love their 
uniforms. The braid and buttons are signs of 
membership in an order. They mean that one 
has a place on life's team. He counts in the cal- 
culations of other men, and in the scrimmage 
which is sure to come he will feel the strain and 
have the glorious sense of helping in the struggle. 

The apostle Paul summons men into the great 
spiritual brotherhood of Christian love and ser- 
vice. He invites them into a bondage which is the 
18 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

highest freedom. He knew that just laws are the 
means of power to every one who obeys them. 
Their yoke is easy and their burden is light. It is 
in the fellowship of mutual service that men are 
losing their narrow and lesser selves and finding 
their larger and diviner selves. He that findeth 
his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life in 
the service of Christ and his fellow man, shall 
surely find it. 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we 
thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink ? 
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or naked, and 
clothed thee ? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came 
unto thee ? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I 
say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Matt, xxv, 37-40. 

Successive periods in the history of the Church 
have emphasized different ideals of Christianity. 
The first century was peculiarly the age of the 
martyrs. Paganism regarded the humble disciples 
of Jesus as traitors to the emperor, and hunted 
them to the death as criminals. The Church, 
in turn, non-militant and meek, welcomed every 
opportunity to witness her faith by patient 
suffering, through every persecution. By the 
exigencies of her conflict, the apostles became 
martyrs like their master. The lowliest followers 
coveted the same fate. The fury of the old order 
was met by the eager surrender of the new reli- 
gion. The greater the Roman thirst for their 
blood, the readier were the Christians to die, 
until the martyrs became the despair of the 
Caesars and the ideal of the Church. 
23 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

In the fourth century asceticism prevailed. 
Estrangement from the natural life of society 
and contemplation of heavenly existence with- 
drew men from the world. Solitude was sought 
as escape from temptation and as opportunity 
for meditation and self-denial. Her first contact 
with government, learning, and wealth made the 
Church fearful and distrustful. Consequently she 
exalted the life of renunciation and of prepara- 
tion for the future. 

In the twelfth century, the Christian warrior, 
the valiant knight of the crusades, came forward 
in the consciousness of the Church. Romantic 
and visionary as they were, the crusaders roused 
the latent energy of Christendom and furnished 
opportunity for action and for the exercise of the 
imagination. The knight was a strange blending 
of warlike savagery and Christian gentleness, but 
he became just on that account, the type and 
symbol of religion in his time. 

In similar sharp definition stands out the mys- 
tic of the fourteenth century. He is projected on 
the rigid background of ecclesiasticism and insti- 
tutionalism. He insists upon direct and immedi- 
ate access to God without priest or pope. His 
character is fashioned in reaction against tradi- 
24 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

tion and in the quest for freedom and direct con- 
tact with the divine. Likewise the theologian is 
the conspicuous Christian of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. He is the exponent of a book religion over 
against what he regards as the human authority 
of the Church and the vagaries of the inner light. 
To him the great saints are the intellectual in- 
terpreters of the faith, the expounders of the 
Scriptures and the creed. Correct belief becomes 
the standard of orthodoxy, and every candidate 
for membership in the Church, from the least to 
the greatest, is examined with reference to his rea- 
sons for the faith that is in him. 

And now in this twentieth century the Chris- 
tian ideal is undergoing another transformation. 
The theological saint is losing prestige. His 
creeds are discredited by greater knowledge and 
by broader vision. As the image of the theologian 
dissolves and fades from view, there is emerging 
the ideal of the social worker. He is becoming 
typical of the Christianity of j our day. This is 
apparent in the official, representative acts of 
the Church. All of the important denominations 
have appointed commissions on social service, and 
have received their recommendations with enthu- 
siasm. The schools for ministerial education have 
25 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

introduced courses in sociology. The Church has 
adopted a social service programme in foreign 
missions, in city parishes, and, more recently, in 
rural communities. This means turning attention 
to the great central problem of human welfare 
with unprecedented energy and intelligence. Re- 
ligion has a new concern for health. It is enlisted 
to prevent disease as well as to cure and nurse the 
sick. The Church is awakening to its duty in 
the campaigns against child labor, white slavery, 
alcoholism, prison abuses, corruption in politics 
and every form of social injustice. Ministers are 
becoming the advocates of educational reforms, 
the extension of playgrounds, better housing, the 
advancement of woman, international peace, and 
the science of eugenics. 

But in all the struggle for social welfare there 
remains a lingering, deep-seated doubt whether 
this is genuinely religious work. Shall we, by this 
programme continue to have a truly spiritual 
religion? Will it generate vital, personal reli- 
gion? Or has the Church been led to take up 
functions which may be exercised in an external, 
mechanical way? Some fear that it is another 
form of mere "works" which may be carried on 
without faith. The social settlement, they say, 
26 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

has sometimes been remote from the Church. It 
has seldom conducted religious services, or re- 
quired of its workers any profession of faith. 
Others believe that religion has found a new 
dynamic in social service, and that a new faith 
and a new fervor are springing from it. It is my 
conviction that the latter are right. I wish to 
emphasize some of the religious elements in these 
new activities of the churches. 

First, this practical, social Christianity is the 
most Biblical of all the historical forms. Other 
ideals, those of the martyr, the monk, the knight, 
the mystic, the theologian, have been able to cite 
certain texts of Scripture in their own behalf. It 
is true that blessings are pronounced upon the 
persecuted and upon those who love not the world. 
There are also texts in which we are exhorted to 
have a reason for the faith that is in us. But the 
central doctrine of Scripture is that Christians are 
finally known and tested by their fruits. We enter 
the kingdom, not by saying, Lord, Lord, but by 
doing his will; not by repeating prayers in his 
name so much as by feeding the hungry, clothing 
the naked, visiting the sick and the imprisoned. 
"What does the Lord require of thee, but to do 
justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
27 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

thy God?" "Pure religion and undefined is to 
visit the fatherless and the widows in their afflic- 
tion." The Good Samaritan was a more typical 
New Testament Christian than the priest or the 
Levite, and he is more typical now than the mystic 
or the theologian. 

The Christian of this twentieth century is a 
more normal and natural Christian than the mar- 
tyr or monk, the crusader or the expounder of 
creeds. Each of them was the result of some pecul- 
iar strain or wrench which Christianity suffered 
in its contact with the world. To-day for the first 
time in two thousand years Christianity stands 
free from such cramping and deforming influences. 
The persecutions have ceased. The Church is no 
longer fleeing from the world. Christianity is at 
home on the earth and in the flesh and is on terms 
of the finest cooperation with the great forces of 
society. "The world," in the sense of the base 
and vicious things of life, has lost too much of its 
illusion and is too well understood to frighten any 
intelligent Christian into solitude. The martyr 
and the monk did not have the resources and the 
mastery of life which Christian people now pos- 
sess. The crusader and the mystic were the prod- 
ucts of a certain vague and restless dreaming 
28 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

which science and experience have in large part 
dispelled. 

Even the theologian of the old school was the 
result of an imperfect and partial view of life. 
The age in which he lived regarded the Bible as 
the direct and perfect revelation of the divine will. 
There was no sufficient understanding of the 
historic process by which the Scriptures had been 
produced. There was no adequate appreciation 
of that most important fact, that every system of 
theology is an interpretation, and that all inter- 
pretation involves a point of view. It has re- 
mained for recent thought to realize with any full- 
ness that the Biblical literature has a point of 
view within itself and that this point of view is 
man's struggle for a larger life. It is the will to 
live, to have life, and to have it more abundantly, 
which constitutes the organizing, dynamic im- 
pulse of the experiences which the Scriptures re- 
cord. In all other periods religion has been forced 
to content itself with a partial and one-sided de- 
velopment of human nature, often fanatical and 
doctrinaire. For the first time the Church is con- 
sistently and conscientiously devoting itself to 
a virile, practical, reasonable, and yet spiritual 
ideal of what a Christian life should be. Chris- 
29 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

tianity has just begun to be herself without con- 
straint or artifice, and in this happy emancipa- 
tion she sees more clearly than ever before that a 
spiritualized social order is the vision and goal of 
New Testament Christianity. 

Jesus was constantly insisting that human life 
in its highest form is the true end of his religion. 
The Sabbath — the symbol and embodiment of 
all ceremonial — the Sabbath was made for man, 
and man should not be subordinated to it nor bur- 
dened by it. The lowest and most sinful person is 
of measureless value, and woe to any one who dis- 
regards or injures him. The whole world's wealth 
and power are worthless compared with one hu- 
man soul. The truth itself is for man. It is to 
make him free. In every way the religion of Jesus 
magnifies as its fundamental purpose the rescue 
and the culture of men. It seeks and saves the 
lost and it enriches those "who are neither poor, 
ignorant, nor depraved." At its heart it is a re- 
ligion for making and remaking men, for cultivat- 
ing in them sympathy, forbearance, and mutual 
helpfulness in the process of building the ideal 
society which is the kingdom of God. 

Now it is precisely this ideal which is fascinating 
the modern mind. It has been the objective of 
30 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

our political revolutions, struggling for democ- 
racy; and of our industrial revolutions, throwing 
off the burdens of toil; and it is the goal of our 
manifold uplift movements at the present time. 
We are getting the idea of using wealth to make 
better men. Government is beginning to be re- 
garded not as an agency for the glorification of 
officials or for the maintenance of laws, but as an 
instrument for ameliorating and improving the 
conditions of human life. Our dramatists are pre- 
senting the claims of democracy and brother- 
hood. Our great cities have long been accustomed 
to various expositions, — horse shows, dog shows, 
flower shows, automobile shows, — but at last we 
have human welfare exhibits. The ancient stream 
of learning, gathered into the reservoirs of the in- 
stitutions of culture, and flowing into the wonder- 
ful achievements of modern science, is finally dis- 
covering that along with many other subjects 
"the proper study of mankind is man." We begin 
to realize the reproach implied in the statement of 
a recent writer on ethics that "the things of great- 
est importance to human life have scarcely been 
touched as yet by science." He points out that 
"we know more about astrophysics than about 
health and disease; more about waste in steam 
31 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

power than about waste in foods, or in education; 
more about classical archaeology than about the 
actual causes of poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, 
and childlessness." 

We are cultivating new extensions of sympa- 
thetic imagination. Any of us feels a deep shud- 
der when we read the account of a child being 
hurt to death under a carelessly driven car, and 
we are beginning to feel revulsion that hundreds 
of little children should be stunted and maimed 
under existing conditions of child labor. We have 
always been horrified by the press reports of in- 
dividual train wrecks, but we are learning to in- 
terpret the annual statistics of railroad and indus- 
trial accidents with something of the same horror 
and indignation. In the Iroquois Theater fire in 
Chicago, six hundred lost their lives. The news- 
papers flamed with the report. In that same 
month and in each month since, more than a 
thousand people died from preventable diseases 
in that city. Formerly these statistics were 
quietly tabulated by the officials and filed away 
in obscure records. But now these shocking facts 
are bulletined throughout the city and the news- 
papers print conspicuously every morning warn- 
ings and instructions concerning health. These 
32 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

humane interests of our time are identical with the 
central purpose of Christianity. Little is gained 
by attempting to determine whether the religion 
of Jesus is altogether responsible for this new 
spirit. It is far more important to appreciate the 
fact that these movements are the fulfillment of 
the best hope and endeavor of the Church from its 
beginning. They are religious in the deepest 
sense. They are Christian in the most vital man- 
ner. When the Church turns its energies into such 
channels, it gains the consciousness of laboring 
at its natural, vital task. It becomes a world- 
transforming power not from without but from 
within; not by alien but by resident forces; not by 
magic or superstition but by law and light. 

The second thing I wish to emphasize is the 
fact that social service generates religious feel- 
ing and conviction. Not only do these modern 
welfare movements constitute the fruits, the 
good works which Christianity requires as the 
test of genuine religion, but they also beget that 
inner disposition of the heart which has been 
magnified by evangelical Christianity. 

It is a fundamental discovery of modern psy- 
chology that emotion accompanies voluntary 
activity. Feeling is generated by conduct. It 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

springs also from the anticipatory rehearsal of 
experiences. When we run over in imagination 
the dangers of an approaching journey or the 
pleasures of a promised vacation, we are in fact 
living through the events themselves. We think 
of ourselves in the midst of various situations and 
we act out incipiently, in truncated gestures and 
expressions, the parts we shall actually play. 
Accompanying this preliminary activity there is 
generated the emotional state appropriate to it. 
The intensity of the emotion is in direct relation 
to the vividness and tension of the imagined ex- 
perience. 

By this principle we may understand more 
fully the conditions and the processes by which 
religious awakenings occur. All spiritual awaken- 
ing, every sound conversion, as it is called, has a 
history. Often it is only the climax that is noted, 
but the backlying conditions are equally impor- 
tant. In the days of the great revivals and acute 
conversions, an individual was prepared for the 
emotional crisis by a series of vivid, imaginative 
experiences. He was made to realize his evil con- 
duct. He was drawn along the path of his wick- 
edness until he felt the shame and disgrace of it. 
Then he was taken in reflection through the way 
34 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

of the righteous and led to taste its peace and 
blessedness. Thus by an intense, often prolonged, 
conflict of contrasted activities and emotions, 
sinners were launched with mighty impetus, into 
the religious life. That became an unforgettable 
event. It loomed like a towering mountain-top 
above all ordinary moments. 

But our matter-of-fact age has grown some- 
what doubtful of that process. It seems artifi- 
cial. Many persons sought it and never attained 
it. We now know that different types of persons 
"get religion" in different ways. It is more emo- 
tional for some than for others. The differences 
are quite comparable to those among people en- 
tering upon their profession or making changes in 
business. Out of a group of artists one finds some 
were started in their career by an emotional crisis, 
others by the influence of companionship, others 
by a gradual training and growth. But in the end 
they are all artists, masters of their technique, 
loyal to their tasks and warmed by the joy and 
satisfaction of achievement. The same is true of 
religious people. Just as persons become artistic 
by the direction of native talent into artistic ac- 
tivities, so persons become religious by participa- 
tion in religious enterprises. 
35 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

To share in the great characteristic human ac- 
tivities is to experience the fundamental human 
emotions. When a bachelor friend of mine mar- 
ried, he had no appreciation of children. He sim- 
ply did not see them. But when his own child was 
born his eyes were opened to the charms of child- 
hood. He entered into a new world and was as 
completely transformed in his sympathies and 
views of life as if he had been given a new nervous 
system. 

A Japanese gentleman, not a Christian, was 
visiting Hull House one day. He saw the resi- 
dents from the neighborhood passing in and out 
— foreigners of different nationalities, ragged 
little children, worn and troubled women, and 
humble laborers. All came with confidence, 
found a moment of companionship, secured a 
book, received a bit of neighborly advice, or some 
other help, and went their way again. Return- 
ing to the busy streets, in the midst of the noise 
and throngs, the Japanese suddenly plucked the 
sleeve of his American companion and in a tone 
of discovery, referring to the scene he had wit- 
nessed, said: "Ah, that is what you mean by the 
Christian spirit!" 

In principle the spirit of religion is generated 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

precisely as the spirit of a game. If one does not 
play golf, the game lies quite outside one's feeling. 
The actions of the players are uninteresting and, 
maybe, entirely absurd. The golf literature and 
the golf symbols are unattractive and meaning- 
less. But if one mingles with enthusiasts for the 
game, hears it praised by intelligent men, and al- 
lows himself to be drawn into a few games under 
favorable circumstances, then his interest kindles, 
his emotions stir, and he becomes a convert to 
golf. He may be surprised at himself, at his seem- 
ing passivity in the experience. He scarcely 
knows how the change took place, but his eager 
devotion and his increasing interest in all that 
belongs to his new sport are sufficient evidence of 
the genuineness of the change wrought in him. 

Is not the same principle operative in religion? 
When one engages in its social enterprises, its 
benevolences, its missions, its humanitarian en- 
deavors, under favorable circumstances, does not 
one feel the kindling idealism and enthusiasm of 
the true religious spirit? Perhaps if the Church 
were as determined and resourceful in cultivating 
the active habits of social service, as she has 
been in conducting "revivals," the flame of the 
religious life would leap higher than ever before 
37 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

and be far more illuminating. Jesus summoned 
men to follow Him in his life of service. Their 
willingness to join Him in the good deeds He 
wrought was enough to admit them to his com- 
pany. He trusted this practical test to the ut- 
most. He formulated the principle of a sane and 
objective challenge when He said, "He that wills 
to do God's will, shall know of the doctrine." 

The third fact I briefly mention is that by its 
devotion to social service Christianity is gain- 
ing a new apologetic — an apologetic which the 
man in the street may quickly comprehend. The 
practical programme of religion combines with 
other influences to supplant the older theoreti- 
cal and dogmatic vindications of Christianity. 
We are no longer acutely convinced and persua- 
ded by arguments concerning the fundamentals 
of the older theology — miracles, inspiration, 
future punishment, and the rest; but we are sen- 
sitive and responsive to a religion which opens 
schools in India, hospitals in China, and neighbor- 
hood centers along the coast of Labrador — which 
creates institutions of learning, of health, of com- 
radeship and hope in all the dark places of the 
earth. 

Besides, the layman is able to appreciate the 
38 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

service which he can render in religion so applied. 
Heretofore the layman has often hesitated to 
pass judgment or to engage in activities in the 
sphere of religion because it seemed to belong to 
the clergy. But the new direction of effort has 
made secular talents sacred by devoting them to 
noble ends. All labor which improves society, 
lessens its injustice, increases its happiness and 
refinement is thereby sanctified. In this larger 
service of man, the lawyer, the teacher, the me- 
chanic finds his task idealized and spiritualized. 
Even the minister discovers that he can no longer 
adequately fulfill his office by the disciplines 
which have conventionally equipped the clergy- 
man. He is therefore seeking efficiency and au- 
thority for his calling through what have long 
been regarded as the secular sciences of medicine, 
pedagogy, civics, and business administration. 
Surely, in a time when churchmen are striving 
for the skill of lay experts, those experts should 
be better able to realize how well equipped they 
are by means of their own specialities, to work the 
works of God. 

It is these works of humanitarian Christianity 
which are teaching the masses of the people the 
true understanding of Jesus Christ, and drawing 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

them together in a great spiritual comradeship. 
No doctrinal interpretation or defense is so con- 
vincing as actual works of love and sympathy. 
Everywhere in distant lands the missionaries are 
met by the astonishment of non-Christians that 
the white man should leave his home and go so far 
to heal the sick and tell good news of peace and 
goodwill. The marvel of that unselfish service is 
the strongest appeal of Christianity abroad and 
at home. It is unanswerable and irresistible. 
Those who engage in it are conscious of common 
ties binding them in a mystic communion far 
above all sects and parties. They experience in 
simple and tangible ways the great realities of 
the religion of Christ. They best know the divine 
nature, for God is love. They enter deepest into 
the fellowship of the apostles, a fellowship of suf- 
fering for the redemption of the race. They at- 
tain the most substantial satisfactions of life, for 
Jesus proclaimed not merely a rule of his own 
faith, but a law of life itself when He said, "He 
that would be the greatest among you, let him be 
the servant of all." 

This ideal of social service is filling the Church 
with new hope. It is attracting stronger men into 
her ministry. It is producing new hymns and a 
40 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL SERVICE 

new spirit of worship. It is affording a new con- 
ception of church membership as an active parti- 
cipation in the growing kingdom of God on earth. 
It is an ideal full of practical deeds and of sweet 
reasonableness, but full also of the romance and 
mystery of the infinite life manifesting itself in 
the will and purposes of men. 



THE JOY OF JESUS 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain 
in you, and that your joy might be full. John xv, 11. 

A notable characteristic of the religious thought 
of our time is the more intimate and sympathetic 
understanding of the personality of Jesus. We 
have long been familiar with his official titles of 
prophet, priest, and king; and with his theological 
designations as the Son of God, the Logos, and the 
Saviour of the world. We have dwelt upon cer- 
tain features of his earthly life, his temptation, his 
hunger and thirst, his suffering and sorrow and 
sacrificial death. Men have made bold to empha- 
size various traits of his character which bring 
Him into still closer and more vital relation with 
our common humanity. Not only have they 
dwelt upon his patience, self-restraint, capacity 
for friendship and heroism, but we read of his love 
of nature, his use of exaggeration, his anger, his 
ignorance on certain subjects, and there is more 
than one book devoted exclusively to the humor 
of Jesus. These studies are not irreverent or ca- 
pricious, but are genuine, sympathetic attempts 
45 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

to plumb the depths and ranges of the ever-fas- 
cinating, many-sided character of Christ. 

Much has been written, too, about the joy of 
Jesus, but usually it has been conceived as an 
unnatural joy — the joy of self-renunciation, of 
silent but highly self-conscious suffering. It has 
seldom been set forth as the joy of a robust, eager 
soul, rejoicing in the energy of youth, in the vol- 
untary choice of a great task and in the intellec- 
tual discovery of spiritual realities. But the more 
searching inquiries of recent scholarship encour- 
age such an interpretation of the joy of Jesus. 
Certain it is they do not represent Him as prima- 
rily a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
That particular designation was derived from the 
Old Testament prophet, and does not express 
Jesus' own thought of Himself. The early dis- 
ciples and the Church in subsequent ages very 
naturally magnified the passion and death of 
Jesus, but it is not in keeping with all we know of 
Him to think that through life he held before 
Himself the consciousness of death upon the 
cross. It is, indeed, quite possible that his buoy- 
ant optimism obscured for a considerable time 
his realization of the deadly opposition forming 
against Him, and that only gradually did He per- 
46 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

ceive the full purpose of his enemies. The very 
depth and vividness of his enthusiasm for the 
Kingdom of God might well have made difficult 
any anticipation of the culminating tragedy of 
his ministry. 

It is important to remember that words can- 
not mean one thing in daily experience and an- 
other in religion, if we are ever to come to an 
understanding with reference to our most ideal 
interests. The joy of Jesus must be comparable 
to our own. It must mean the gratification of 
wants, the satisfaction of desires, the fulfillment 
of hopes, where there was uncertainty and real 
chance of failure. The particular things which 
yield pleasure to different men may be as various 
as collecting stamps and commanding armies, but 
they all have this in common: they supply some 
felt need. A man's joy reveals the kind of man 
he is. It shows his deepest craving. It uncovers 
the hot spot of his mind. Jesus was no exception. 
His character may be seen in his satisfactions. 
We have his own deliberate and conscious empha- 
sis upon the joy He felt and which He desired to 
share with his disciples. He was approaching the 
great crisis. His mind was filled by thoughts of 
his mission. It was important that his disciples 
47 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

make no mistake concerning the spirit and tem- 
per of his teaching. At that moment He surveyed 
his instruction, and exclaimed: "These things 
have I spoken unto you that my joy might re- 
main in you and that your joy might be full." 

I wish to consider this happiness of Jesus as it is 
manifested in his natural impulses, in his devo- 
tion to a great task, and in the play of his imagin- 
ation as he interpreted and projected the mean- 
ing of his gospel. We have come to have greater 
respect for our natural appetites and impulses. 
The instincts have attained new dignity in the 
eyes of science and philosophy. They are re- 
garded as the raw materials, the vital stuff, out 
of which our lives develop. The energy and sen- 
sitivity of these elemental impulses make life 
urgent and warm. They contribute a vibrant, 
tender beauty to all young life. They furnish the 
dynamics of the organized habits of manhood. 
The presence of this original quality and flavor of 
youth is unmistakable. It cannot be simulated 
and it cannot be disguised. This quality shines 
through all the words and gestures of Jesus. He 
thereby stands in striking contrast with the hard- 
ened old age of his nation. He moves with the 
strong, sinewy step of a vigorous man. There is a 
48 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

fresh, persuasive note in his speech which the 
people at once detect. "They were astonished at 
his teaching," the record runs, "for He taught 
them as one having authority, and not as the 
scribes." This authority was doubtless the ex- 
pression, in part at least, of the unworn energy of 
his youth. 

Jesus was perfectly conscious that He was no 
ascetic and that his frank acceptance of the natu- 
ral appetites and affections constantly brought 
Him under criticism. The difference between 
Him and John the Baptist, in this respect, was 
readily observed. Jesus declared, "John came 
neither eating nor drinking and they say, He hath 
a devil. The Son of Man came eating and drink- 
ing, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and 
a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." 
Jesus mingled freely in the social life about Him. 
One commentator remarks that " there is no rec- 
ord in the New Testament of his ever having de- 
clined an invitation," and adds, "His habit in this 
respect is illustrated by his presence at the mar- 
riage at Cana of Galilee, the feast at Matthew's 
house, the house of Simon, the dinner given Him 
by the Pharisees, and the supper given by Mary 
and Martha." 

49 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

There are other evidences of his instinctive 
delight in natural things. He had a fresh, sensu- 
ous joy in the open fields and in the solitudes of 
the mountains. The flowers held his eye, and 
their transient beauty impressed Him with the 
marvelously intimate care of God . He had a peas- 
ant's love of nature and it was his habit to escape 
into her silences for poise and vision. He felt the 
blue waters of the Lake of Galilee carry Him ca- 
ressingly into peace and rest. 

This deep mystical passion for the free life of 
the hills was only equaled by his love of the pro- 
phetic innocence of childhood. One led Him into 
a consciousness of divine providence, and the 
other to the spirit of his coming kingdom — a 
kingdom constituted by pure and teachable souls. 
Thus the powerful impulses of his nature deter- 
mined his outlook upon the world. There was 
about Him, even in his subdued moments, the un- 
spent nervous force of a strong man, interpreting 
life through his own creative personality. His 
gesture frightened the money-changers from the 
temple. He felt able to exert the power of legions 
of angels. One grain of his faith would remove 
mountains. The very words He uttered seemed 
eternal. He feared neither violence nor death. 
50 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

Even if He were crucified He would have strength 
to rise again, and the company of his disciples — 
his Church — He would build upon the rock of his 
mighty spirit so securely that the very gates of 
hell could not prevail against it. 

May we not thus think, with reverence, of the 
consciousness of power born of the natural in- 
stincts within him? Does not some measure of 
that power sweep through the soul of any one of 
us, in some moments of our lives? Are not these 
the hours of our visions, our awakenings, our il- 
luminations? Are not these the precious moments 
of the mystic when he seems to transcend the lim- 
its of ordinary knowledge and catch glimpses of 
God's very essence? 

In such passionate moments, the bounds of 
logical thought seem passed, and routine habits 
cast off. These may be the channels of what we 
call inspiration, through which, if we are scientists 
we make discoveries; if we are artists, we arrive at 
new beauty; if we are prophets, we gain new reve- 
lations — the channels through which, no matter 
what we may be, we feel the passionate and ele- 
mental joy of life. 

The joy of Jesus may further be viewed in re- 
spect to his task. When the seventy returned tri- 
51 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

umphantly from the first mission upon which He 
sent them, his exultation was intense. "In that 
hour," the narrative tells us, "Jesus rejoiced in 
spirit and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of 
heaven and earth." "And he turned to his dis- 
ciples and said, Blessed are the eyes which see the 
things that ye see; for I tell you, that many 
prophets and kings have desired to see these 
things that ye see, and have not seen them; and 
to hear those things which ye hear, and have not 
heard them." 

We can scarcely exaggerate the emotion of 
Jesus at that moment. For generations his na- 
tion had cherished the hope of an awakening and 
a deliverance. Some still looked for it in outward 
power and pomp, in the coming of a grand king 
like David. But Jesus cherished a wiser hope, 
caught, perhaps, from the prophet Isaiah, nour- 
ished by gentle spirits like the aged Simeon, and 
Mary, the mother of Jesus. This hope was for 
one to preach good tidings unto the meek, to bind 
up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 
captives, and the opening of the prison to them 
that are bound; to give them that mourn beauty 
for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the gar- 
ment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 
52 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

These were the very words Jesus took for a 
text in the first discourse of his public ministry. 
This was the message He enjoined the seventy to 
preach, for in every city they were to heal the sick 
and say, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto 
you. It was the first great venture upon the long- 
cherished hope of the more spiritual patriots of 
his people. How would the message be received? 
What response would the people make? No won- 
der Jesus felt a thrill of ecstasy when the seventy 
returned with joy and said, " Lord, even the devils 
are subject unto us." 

There was something ancestral, something 
massive and corporate uttering itself in this re- 
sponse of the people. It was the ancient national 
spirit rising to prophetic speech once more. But 
the keen satisfaction of that moment was yet to 
be deepened and mellowed by relentless opposi- 
tion and persecution. The officials of the existing 
order blocked the progress of Jesus. Their anger 
and hatred grew as they saw the crowds increas- 
ing round Him. And here is just the point at 
which we have been most mistaken about the 
emotional experience of Jesus. 

We have witnessed the contest between Jesus 
and the Pharisees too much in the attitude of 
53 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

casual observers. We have been like timid, un- 
seeing persons witnessing an athletic contest. 
The players rush into the scrimmages, tense and 
determined. They collide, and fall, and struggle. 
They rise, bruised and bloody. Some are carried 
off the field. We say, Poor fellows, how they suf- 
fer! What pitiful lives they live! How depressed 
and melancholy they must be, having always to 
be in training, to struggle, and endure, that others 
may enjoy the fruits of their vicarious sacrifice. 
How false is such an impression. How it misses 
the whole experience of the players. They are 
really at the height of keenest pleasure. They are 
the bearers of the college colors and the college 
spirit. They are unconscious of the blood and 
dirt. The blows and cuts are mere stings and 
scratches, and they rush back into line full of the 
glory of their cause and the hope of victory. 

Or we may think of the patriot marching to 
battle. It is terrible, but it is grand. To the ob- 
server, he fronts hardships and danger and death. 
For himself, he has a cause at heart. Into the 
thick of the fight he goes with the challenge of 
the moral universe upon him. He is beyond all 
thought of any other joy in the undivided energy 
he gives to this. 

54 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

I think it was so with Jesus. The scattered, 
shepherdless souls of his countrymen stirred his 
compassion. He espoused their cause against the 
injustices, hypocrisies, and vices by which they 
were burdened. Every opposition He encountered 
awakened new resources within Him and height- 
ened the importance of his task. To the observer 
He was abused, belied, mocked, scourged, and 
crucified. To Himself he was the ardent, faithful, 
deathless champion of a glorious kingdom. We 
enter most intimately into his emotions when we 
think of Him as committed to a great moral ad- 
venture in which the spiritual destiny of the race 
hung in the balance. No one knew in advance, 
not even Jesus Himself, what the outcome would 
be. No one knew the day nor the hour, nor the 
manner of the end. That is the only kind of a sit- 
uation which elicits genuine feeling. No contest 
awakens interest where the strife is unreal, where 
the forces are known to be unevenly matched, or 
where one side has some unnatural advantage. 
If Jesus had been as spectral and magical a person 
as some have thought, He could not have been 
even a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; 
but with a nature truly like our own, only might- 
ier and holier and sincerely devoted to the vast 
55 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

enterprise of human redemption, He could only 
be what He Himself said He was, a man of joy. 
For the building of a race of righteous men is the 
noblest possible adventure, and he who gives him- 
self to it is sure of greater satisfactions than gladi- 
ators or warriors achieve. 

It was the hope of Jesus that this joy might be 
shared by his disciples and that their joy might be 
full. They could experience it by the same fear- 
less and unmeasured devotion to the betterment 
of humanity. Every man who has in any way 
joined in this moral adventure of Christianity 
knows what the Master meant. The astonishing 
thing is that so many people have never made 
this discovery of the satisfactions of strenuous 
moral endeavor. We are eager enough for pleas- 
ure, but we seem blind to the means of its attain- 
ment. We are evermore seeking it for itself, while 
all of the psychologists and philosophers insist 
that we should heed the paradox that it is only 
found where it is not sought. It is the elusive 
blue bird which we seek far and wide, only to find 
it in kindly deeds at our own lowly fireside. And 
it escapes us even there the moment we become 
too conscious of it. When we try to hold it in 
our hands and stroke it, it flies out of the window. 
56 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

There must be some hardihood about our moral 
adventures; some distant objective, some forget- 
fulness of self. The chances for a thrilling good 
time are overwhelmingly on the side of the Lady 
of the Decoration, as against my lady of comforts, 
dwelling securely at home in the lap of luxury. 

Mr. Chesterton declares that "the thing called 
high spirits is possible only to the spiritual." 
"Ultimately," he says, "a man can enjoy nothing 
but religion." You remember the contrast he 
draws between Jesus Christ and Omar Khayyam 
in the use of wine. "Jesus Christ made wine not 
a medicine, but a sacrament. But Omar makes 
it not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feasts be- 
cause life is not joyful; he revels because he is not 
glad. * Drink,' he says, "for you know not whence 
you come nor why. Drink, for you know not 
when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars 
are cruel and the world as idle as a humming top. 
Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base 
equality and an evil peace.' So he stands, offering 
us the cup in his hand. And at the high altar of 
Christianity stands another figure, in whose hand 
also is the cup of the vine. 'Drink,' He says, 'for 
the whole world is as red as this wine, with the 
crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for 
57 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is 
the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this is my blood of the 
New Testament that is shed for you. Drink, for 
I know of whence you come and why. Drink, 
for I know of when you go and where." 

But the joy of Jesus was not merely instinctive 
exuberance, nor was it only self-forgetfulness in 
a huge task. His impulsive energy and powerful 
will expressed themselves also in the luminous 
play of a clear, discerning intellect. He has some- 
times been classed as a successor of the wise men 
or sages of his race, rather than as a priest or 
prophet. But He never gives the impression of a 
love for purely speculative wisdom. His reflec- 
tion issues from the deep moral need He sees 
about Him. His ideas are warm and urgent with 
human interest. They are concrete and visualized, 
yet definite and organic. His thought moves with 
the quick, free action of a mind ready and at ease. 

He had no fear of knowledge, but welcomed it 
as an essential of his religion. "Wisdom is jus- 
tified of her children," He declared. Again He 
said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
shall make you free." So thoroughly did He trust 
man's natural reason, that He asked the common 
people why they could not discern the moral 
58 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

signs of the time with some such certainty as they 
detected signs of rain or fair weather. "Yea, and 
why even of yourselves judge ye not what is 
right?" 

His own mind held clearly the great moral dis- 
tinctions and values of life. He never confused 
anise, mint, and cummin with the weightier mat- 
ters of the law — judgment, mercy, and faith. 
He saw that some of the Ten Commandments are 
more important than others, and without hesita- 
tion asserted that love to God and love to man are 
the two commandments upon which hang all the 
law and the prophets. With the same deep pene- 
tration He gave morality a new dimension when 
He arraigned the traditional standards, saying, 
"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old 
time, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill 
shall be in danger of the judgment; but I say unto 
you, that whosoever is angry with his brother 
without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. 
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I 
say unto you — Love your enemies." 

Jesus also saw clearly the action and reaction 
of psychical attitudes and moral dispositions 
among people. He warned his disciples that they 
59 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

would be judged by their own manner of judging 
and that according to their own measure would 
others measure back to them. "They that take 
the sword shall perish by the sword." "Whatso- 
ever ye would that men should do unto you, do 
ye even so unto them." 

At times the illustration of this principle rose 
to a touch of humor, as when He asked, "And 
why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy 
brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that 
is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out 
the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt 
thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy 
brother's eye." 

We sometimes encounter minds which seem 
endowed with a special gift for mathematical 
forms and formulas. They move to the heart of 
a problem with facile and sure intuition, while 
other men are confused and heavy in their num- 
ber processes. In some such contrast Jesus stood 
to many with whom his conversations are pre- 
served to us. His interpretation of a moral situa- 
tion separates the gold from the dross so that all 
right-minded men perceive the distinction. It 
was often so when they tried to trap Jesus into 
some embarrassing admission; for example, when 
60 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

they inquired about taxes, and He answered by 
the image and superscription of the tribute 
money, "Render unto Csesar the things that are 
Csesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 
And again when they questioned whether He 
should heal a man on the Sabbath, He pointed to 
their own willingness to rescue a sheep from a pit- 
fall on the Sabbath, and remarked, "How much, 
then, is a man better than a sheep?" 

With the same precision He disclosed the hy- 
pocrisy of the Pharisees, who strained at gnats 
of legalism and swallowed camels of actual sin. 
They made clean the outside, but within were full 
of extortion and excess. 

But it was, perhaps, in the contemplation of 
the growth of his kingdom that He experienced 
the keenest satisfactions. He saw through the 
seeming paradox of its inner law. And when his 
disciples came to Him still confused by the illu- 
sions of worldly power and rank, and by the con- 
ception of advancement through influence and 
favoritism, He answered that in the kingdom of 
true morality and righteousness it was not so, 
but that He that would be the greatest must 
be the servant of all. This kingdom, therefore, 
enlarges itself from within and by processes which 
61 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

are beyond the comprehension of selfish men. 
It communicates itself like the leaven hidden in 
the meal; it grows like the tiny mustard seed from 
small beginnings to great proportions; it is like 
secret treasure for which, when they discover it, 
men sell all the outward goods they possess. 

Those who seek first this kingdom find all the 
qualities which are effective in this present world, 
for they must be faithful and honest and indus- 
trious and pure. Such men are not harassed by 
anxious thought for the outward goods. They are 
of untroubled hearts in the midst of the strife and 
clamor of the world, and they enjoy a peace which 
passeth all understanding of the selfish mind. 

It was with this farseeing insight that Jesus 
faced the cross. "Whosoever exalteth himself 
shall be abased, and he that shall humble himself 
shall be exalted." That intellectual conviction 
transformed the cross — and the glory of that 
transformation has been made brighter as men 
have grown to understand it more adequately. 

It was such joy as this which Jesus craved 
for his disciples, a joy so natural and spontane- 
ous that it already throbs in the unspoiled im- 
pulses of children and of virtuous men; a joy so 
virile and cumulative that it rises with the great- 
62 



THE JOY OF JESUS 

ness of the moral task undertaken; a joy so sane 
and intelligible that it unfolds its logic to every 
pure and teachable mind. 

Unfortunately, the disciples of Jesus have not 
always entered fully into this joy. They have 
often caught the serious summons of the Master 
with Puritan rigor, but without his full confidence 
in life. They have put on sackcloth and ashes 
when they might well have worn the wedding 
garment. They have sometimes made the high 
day of religion gloomy and stern and forbidding, 
when in its proper spirit it is a day of noble fellow- 
ship and song. 

We are this week entering upon the season of 
Lent. Let us not deceive ourselves by thinking 
we are religious because we are sad of counte- 
nance and quiet in manner. We should be sad 
when we reflect upon our lives, if we find that they 
are not religious. Our grief is necessary, not be- 
cause we are keeping company with Christ, but 
because through misapprehension, or carelessness, 
or perversion of spirit, we have wandered away 
from Him. If we truly enter into his life, we shall 
find Him buoyant where outward circumstances 
made us think Him broken in spirit; we shall find 
Him silent in the presence of threatening death, 
63 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

not because He is afraid or confounded, but be- 
cause already He sees the future with a vision 
that none of his disciples — much less Pilate or 
the priests — can share. 

Easter is the true objective of Lent, for at 
Easter religion comes forth again with festival 
and song, with drama and pageant. Then the 
true disciples of Christ raise aloft the cross, not 
as the emblem of pain and defeat, but as the sign 
of victory and immortal life. Then they experi- 
ence what Jesus meant when He said, "These 
things have I spoken unto you that my joy might 
remain in you and that your joy might be full." 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

" Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a 
cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which 
doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is 
set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." 
Heb. xii, 1, 2. 

Theke is something deeply human in this refer- 
ence to the presence of other people as a reason 
for strenuous moral endeavor. It is almost dis- 
concerting to be so frankly urged to be good 
because one is being observed. Yet there is no 
denying the fact that our neighbors' opinions 
are mighty goads to good actions and powerful 
deterrents from evil. We do not always admit it. 
We are, indeed, seldom conscious of the extent 
to which it is true. There is often an avowal of 
disinterested, independent devotion to truth and 
honor, while all the time one is really controlled 
and guided by the attitudes and expressions of the 
persons standing by. Every normal human being 
lives in this medium of social stimulation and con- 
trol, as a fish lives in water or a bird in air. 

It has always been so. The helplessness of 
human infancy determines every individual to an 
67 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

intimate dependence upon others for several of 
the most impressionable years. There can be no 
infant Robinson Crusoe all alone on a desert 
island. And by the time a Robinson Crusoe is 
able to maintain himself in solitude, he is already 
formed and fashioned under the eyes of many 
witnesses. The approval and censure of the fam- 
ily circle, of playfellows and of various kith and 
kin, establish the core of his code of conduct. As 
a child, seeing a shining vase upon the table, im- 
pulsively puts out a hand to touch it, and then, 
with the hand poised in air, turns to search the 
mother's face for permission to proceed, so hu- 
man beings are always casting side glances to 
ascertain the opinions of the spectators. It is 
noticeable that people are frequently more care- 
ful about their front yards, which the public may 
see, than they are with the back yards. We quite 
naturally agree that it is more important to have 
the street side of the house of better material 
or to keep it especially well painted and repaired. 
We thus pay tribute to the sentiments of others. 
Without this environing human presence, we are 
like sailors who have no compass and cannot see 
the stars. The most ordinary moral judgments 
lose their meaning when the individual is cut off 
68 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

from his fellows. Every one knows, for example, 
that in dealing with others it is wrong to cheat, 
but a student recently asked in all seriousness 
whether it is immoral to cheat in solitaire. 

The moralists identify the growth of ethical 
sentiment in an individual with the growth of 
his knowledge of the judgment of his associates. 
As one writer says: "There is often a lack of 
sharp condemnation of ourselves as long as our 
sins remain private; we are aware of the sinful- 
ness in a general way; conscience gets in a timid 
voice, especially just at the time of commission 
of the deed, and more timidly each time that it is 
committed ; but there may be no lively emotional 
reaction, no great agitation of remorse, no desper- 
ate attempts to justify one's self by argument, no 
call to repentance. But let it once come out; then 
his nature asserts itself. The sense of publicity 
immediately reacts upon his own private stand- 
ards of judgment." He then sees himself as others 
see him and the profound emotions of self-con- 
demnation sweep over him. Similarly, a man's 
sense of the value of virtue, of strict honor and 
integrity, is heightened and strengthened by the 
recognition and approval of others. 

It is this great universal fact of our moral 
69 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

experience which the text employs. It implies 
also that one may select and enlarge the cloud 
of witnesses in imagination and keep them be- 
fore the mind when they are no longer accessible 
in physical presence. These witnesses which the 
inner eye beholds serve as supports and guides 
when a man's actual companions are inadequate, 
or when they might tyrannize over his will and 
hinder his most ideal achievements. 

The possession of such a company of ideal 
companions is a distinctly human characteristic. 
Out of sight, out of mind, is the fate of the lower 
orders of life, and it was only gradually that the 
memory of man lengthened to include the names 
and deeds of any individuals beyond a generation 
or two. It was the development of language and 
the accumulation of traditions and records which 
enabled man to draw away from the narrow world 
of other animals, and guide himself by the achieve- 
ments of many individuals remote in time and 
place. The recital of the deeds of the great names 
of Israel's past, as given in the eleventh chapter 
of Hebrews, is a typical expression of the way in 
which the race brought its lengthening memory 
to bear upon the conduct of the individual. Here 
are arrayed with dramatic vividness and individ- 
70 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

uality the ancestral heroes of the faith. Some of 
them, like Abel, Enoch and Noah, Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob move upon the shadowy borders 
of mythology and folklore. Others stand in the 
light of history — David, Samuel, the prophets, 
and the great company of the nameless cham- 
pions of faith. All of them exemplify the power 
of faith — "through faith they subdued king- 
doms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, 
stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the vio- 
lence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of 
weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in 
fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." 

They endured as seeing the invisible. It was 
the cultivation of this ability to transcend the 
present moment and live in intimate companion- 
ship with the past which contributed to the in- 
tensity of religious life among the Jews. They 
thus created and transmitted a rich heritage of 
national idealism which has marvelously resisted 
changes of environment and all manner of out- 
ward misfortunes. By impressing the stories of 
their early heroes upon the minds of the children, 
they fortified one generation after another against 
alien standards and kept them loyal to the race 
ideals. 

71 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

Besides, it was possible in this way to cherish 
only those traits of the former generations which 
contributed to the ideal ends desired. There were 
many characters whom it was advantageous to 
forget. Thus the process of selection was con- 
stantly at work, not so much by deliberate or 
conscious determination as by the attraction of a 
common purpose. The dauntless spirit of the 
race, especially in time of disaster, attracted to 
itself the like-minded characters of the past and 
thereby confirmed its hope and fixed more securely 
that type of mind for the future. 

It was lack of continuity in their outward his- 
tory which forced the Hebrews to maintain with 
rigor and devotion, the inner spirit and mental 
pictures of their past. This tendency preserved 
the soul of the nation after its institutions were 
broken and humbled. It has enabled the faithful 
Jews for thousands of years to preserve their 
racial identity and to endure contempt and dis- 
aster as no other people has done. No other has 
shown so much tenacity of ancient ideals through 
such calamities and opposition. And this has 
been due to the fact that with deep moral earnest- 
ness and unflagging zeal, the imagination of every 
child has been infused with the idealized characters 
72 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

of the long line of national heroes. These char- 
acters have had the quality of life and the inti- 
macy of deepest sentiment. They have been better 
known and more devotedly obeyed than the visible 
companions of the hour. They have been the in- 
visible keepers of the conscience and the honor of 
the generations which have cherished them. 

It was this habit of mind which became one 
of the greatest contributions of Judaism to Chris- 
tianity. So long as the Christians were scorned 
and persecuted by their contemporaries, they 
were forced to secure approval and spiritual com- 
panionship in imagination with the Old Testa- 
ment heroes or with the celestial company of the 
apostles and martyrs. The doctrine of the heav- 
enly existence which Christianity emphasized, 
gave a new field for the imagination and incalcu- 
lably strengthened the hearts and wills of the 
faithful. Why should they be disheartened by the 
disdain of Roman governors and the ridicule of 
common soldiers when they were conscious of the 
sympathetic presence and encouragement of their 
exalted King and his mighty cohorts? It was 
thus a simple matter for the early Christians to 
employ the long accustomed usage of the Hebrew 
mind and to enlarge and idealize the grand com- 
73 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

pany of its heroes by adding the living, though 
invisible, spirits of their dead. Here was secured 
a more powerful and vivid aid to the imagination, 
inasmuch as the great souls whose approval one 
craves are not merely in the past but are living 
witnesses, just barely removed from sight, quick 
and sensitive to our mortal strife. 

Christianity has here availed itself of a very 
natural and universal tendency of the mind, to 
feel toward the absent ones something of the 
same respect and affection which they elicited 
when actually present. Among primitive people 
the dead are felt to be active and influential and 
hover about their homes and associates with awe- 
inspiring presence. Christianity has enhanced 
that view and qualified it with a moral principle, 
for it is now the righteous dead whose presence 
the Christian contemplates and whose approval 
he regards. 

The Church has magnified this mystic host of 
the heavenly world and has encouraged the most 
vivid imagery with reference to the saints ranged 
above us intent in contemplation of our moral 
conflict. Their sympathy and inspiration are 
often felt to be the most powerful incentives to 
our noblest endeavors. 

74 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

"How should we bear our life 
Without the friendship of the happy dead?" 

runs the sentiment of a recent mystical poem by 
Miss Evelyn Underhill. 

"They see 
The steadfast purpose of eternity. 
Their care is all for us : they whisper low 
Of the great heritage 
To which we go. 

As one may tell a child of tender age 
Of manhood and its joys, 
They from our toys 
Call us to contemplation of the light. 
We, all unknowing, wage 
Our endless fight 
By ghostly banners led, 
By arms invisible helped in the strife. 
Without the friendship of the happy dead 
How should we bear our life?" 

This is the theme of many of the noblest 
hymns of the Church, reminding us of those — 

"Who, from the battlements above, 
Follow our course with eager love, 
And cheer our contest on." 

The first great step in the idealization and spir- 
itualization of human life, then, we may say, is 
this release of man from his immediate environ- 
ment and the reference of his conduct to the great 
lives of the past and to the heavenly company of 
75 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

those who have died in the faith. But all this may 
occur within the unmodified tradition of the past. 
The individual who accepts this heritage and lives 
in obedience to it possesses indeed a larger and 
richer inner life than one whose conscience had 
no such historical and celestial perspective. But 
for all that, it may be a life which is bound to 
precedent, subject to the authority of tradition 
and quite wholly given to imitation and acquies- 
cence. If we lived in a changeless, intellectual 
world, that type of religion might be sufficient, 
but in a growing social order where different his- 
torical traditions are often in conflict, something 
more is needed. To many minds of our modern 
world the original Hebrew tradition and its modi- 
fied form in historic Christianity scarcely supply 
the full satisfaction demanded. That tradition 
is at least called upon to meet other traditions in 
a new way. The assertion of its truth, its an- 
tiquity, the number of its adherents cannot 
answer the deeper questions which many sin- 
cere minds are asking. Where and how, then, 
may a sincere soul of this day determine what 
cloud of witnesses to invoke? Here is a modern 
man who makes his appeal to the Greek worthies. 
Auguste Rodin, in his brochure "To the Venus 
76 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

of Melos," says of his experience with Greek art: 
"In the Louvre, of old, like saints to a monk in 
his cloister, the Olympian gods said to me all that 
a young man might usefully hear; later they 
protected and inspired me; after an absence of 
twenty years, I found them again with an in- 
describable joy, and I understood them. These 
divine fragments, these marbles, older than two 
thousand years, speak to me louder, move me 
more than human beings." 

Another man of Western culture makes his 
home in Japan and comes to believe profoundly 
in the moral and artistic ideals of that land and 
makes himself a kind of missionary of Japanese 
art and culture. A third man of our Anglo-Saxon 
world is fascinated with life in India and becomes 
a devotee of theosophy, which he commends to 
us with zeal and earnestness. It is also possible 
to meet men among us who have come to know 
intimately the social control, the proverbial wis- 
dom, and the ceremonial customs of the tribes 
of Central Africa, or of Australia, and who are 
dubious about the claims of our culture and our 
religion, in comparison. Not only are we experi- 
encing this contact of various cultures with their 
differing standards and ideals, but within our 
77 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

own society there are numerous claimants for al- 
legiance. There is a certain type of scientist 
who like Darwin, may have given himself to his 
observations of facts and the formulations of 
hypotheses and generalizations, until he has no 
interest in poetry and the symbolic idealizations 
of life which characterize art and religion. 

With all these there is also present the prac- 
tical man of affairs who may or may not elaborate 
the theory which his conduct suggests. He works 
as if life had its charm and justification in utili- 
tarian efficiency and skill. He sees the power of 
wealth and a certain respect which it elicits even 
from those devoted to other ideals, and he con- 
cludes that at least all men in middle life see the 
wisdom of his course and tacitly admit that 
worldly success and material goods are among the 
most important possessions possible to men. 

This is not the first age of the world in which 
such a conflict of traditions has occurred, and in 
which a civilization has had its traditions deeply 
challenged. It happened so among the Greeks at 
the time of the Sophists; and among the Romans 
in the age of the decline of the empire when a great 
number of Oriental cults struggled with Judaism 
and Christianity for supremacy. But there is this 
78 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

difference in our time. The wide diffusion of 
knowledge makes the problem vital to more peo- 
ple. It is as though for the masses of men there 
appeared within the field of mental vision not 
only the cloud of witnesses which their own tra- 
ditional culture affords, but also those vast com- 
panies of the saints of other faiths, vigorous in 
devotion to their beliefs and equally ready to 
encourage and crown any who will fight under 
their banners. 

It is analogous to the perplexity of a person 
who removes from a relatively simple commu- 
nity into the maelstrom of a great city. In the 
smaller town he has acquaintances on every side, 
whom he meets freely. His labors and his recre- 
ations are part of their own life. He feels quickly 
their praise or blame. He is held to the moral 
standards of his class and group by the simple and 
direct operation of public opinion. But in the 
city there is a great multiplicity of social sets — 
clubs, lodges, associations, and guilds. The street 
on which he lives is no longer a neighborhood, the 
business associates he encounters have little com- 
mon life outside of business. A great wealth of 
organizations offer their ideals and companion- 
ships, but the old habits and traditions of the 
79 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

smaller community afford little rational guidance 
in the new, bewildering life. He has lost the in- 
timate connection with the old cloud of witnesses 
before whom he felt the values of life decisively 
and urgently, while among the confused and dis- 
cordant multitudes of the metropolis no one at 
first seems to care whither he goes. No one as- 
sumes responsibility for his direction. 

In some similar way the modern mind has 
found itself in spiritual bewilderment in the pres- 
ence of many voices. It is unavailing merely to 
reassert the old authority with greater vehemence 
and insistence. So far as the text offers a solution 
for this emergency, it is found in the exhortation 
to run the race with the eyes fixed, not upon the 
past, but upon the future; not upon the ancient 
heroes so much as upon the ideal man beyond. It 
is as though the course upon which the runner ran 
stretched away into a distance where the specta- 
tors could only follow by their eager vision and 
where they themselves had never actually run. 
One figure only had passed along that course, and 
that was the figure of Jesus Christ, who ventured 
beyond the ancient goals and opened a new and 
living way toward God. 

In the New Testament Jesus appeared as one 
80 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

who directed men beyond the old tradition. He 
was often in conflict with the ancient order. It 
was not sufficient for Him to know what was said 
by them of old time. He was free to say things 
radically different. And He did not offer Himself 
as another lawgiver or dictator. He proclaimed 
Himself rather as a friend and teacher, whose 
words rested not so much upon his own authority 
as upon experience. The truth itself would make 
men free. Others, coming after Him, would do 
greater things than Himself. 

Jewish descent was not necessary in order to be 
a true son of Abraham. The God whom Jesus 
worshiped counted as true sons of Abraham only 
those who had faith like Abraham's — a faith 
for adventure and endurance, in the interest of a 
righteous cause. To Jesus any place was just as 
sacred as Jerusalem, if it were a place where men 
truly worshiped God. 

St. Paul understood how new and untraditional 
the religion of Jesus was in this respect. He saw 
that a Jew is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but 
he is a Jew who is one inwardly, regardless of 
blood or any ceremonial. The apostle Paul re- 
peated no conviction oftener or with greater em- 
phasis than this, that in Christianity there is no 
81 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
free; that the old order had passed away, and be- 
hold all things are new! 

It was, then, upon such a leader as this that the 
Jewish Christians were to fix their eyes as they 
ran their race, surrounded by the cloud of wit- 
nesses. When Jesus Christ is thus understood, He 
becomes an inspiring leader for an age in which 
the old traditions clash. He becomes the embodi- 
ment of the best elements of all the streams of 
culture in the race. The gentle Buddha, the wise 
Confucius, the earnest Mohammed are not re- 
pelled by Christ, but, like Moses and the prophets, 
receive through Him the vindication and fulfill- 
ment of the true spirit of their teaching. It is the 
fuller appreciation of this fact which is opening a 
new chapter in Christian missions. The Christian 
missionary no longer feels compelled to denounce 
en bloc all of these ancient revelations of God 
among the various peoples of the earth. On the 
contrary, he seeks in their sacred books for every 
Christ-like word, and is ready to employ at its 
full value every truly catholic text or parable of 
the New Testament Scriptures. 

It is also this deep, free spirit of Christ which 
may guide one in the confusion which many ex- 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

perience in our scientific age. The so-called con- 
flict between science and religion has its ground 
in narrow and superficial views of science and of 
religion. One is almost able to say that such a con- 
flict no longer exists between minds of the first rank 
either among scientists or ministers. Christianity, 
at its best, in our day welcomes in the very name 
and spirit of Christ all the knowledge, all the 
investigation, all the genuine experimentation of 
science. And Christianity does this, not with the 
feeling that science works in an alien realm, but 
in the conviction that its problems lie at the very 
heart of its own task, the task, namely, of so un- 
derstanding nature and life, God and the world 
and man, that it may be possible to build more 
rapidly and more securely a kingdom of righteous- 
ness and love and peace upon the earth. Religion 
needs the aid of science to abolish superstition 
and to refine the tools of progress; and science 
needs religion to keep alive the ideal meaning 
of all our tasks, and to make luminous and 
resplendent, the social, spiritual goal of all our 
labor. 

When, therefore, the Christian, in the race he 
runs, looks forward to Jesus Christ, he should see 
in Him not an arbitrary mind, nor a barrier to 
83 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

progress, but a free spirit, opening the course and 
himself urging all men ever onward in the way. 
This represents the ultimate emancipation of 
mankind. It was of profound importance to free 
men from the tyranny of the moment and from 
the bonds of immediate experience by extending 
the perspective of human life into the past and 
preserving there the great characters and deeds 
of history. But that achievement still made pos- 
sible a fatal bondage — the bondage of tradition, 
of precedent, of a fixed standard. 

The other emancipation, in which the human 
spirit especially rejoices to-day, is release from 
this slavery of tradition. Men feel themselves 
freer than ever before to accept from any culture 
of the past its rich treasure, without thereby be- 
coming the devotees of all the elements of that 
culture, or forfeiting the right to accept the gifts 
of other peoples. One may now, at last, be both a 
Greek and a Jew, a scientist and a saint, a scholar 
and a Christian, in the deepest and best import 
of these terms. 

And finally, it is some satisfaction to remind 

ourselves that the writer of the letter to the 

Hebrews realized that the cloud of witnesses he 

described were not themselves perfect. Those who 

84 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

came after them were necessary to complete what 
the ancient heroes attempted — "God having 
provided some better thing for us, that they with- 
out us should not be made perfect." It is doubtful 
whether the greatest men of the past ever desired 
their own words to be praised as the final state- 
ments of truth, or their deeds as the end of per- 
fection. It is more frequently the desire of the 
parent that the child should accomplish finer and 
greater things. Every right-thinking man who is 
compelled to give up a task into which he has put 
his life is happy to see others carry it on, and he 
is doubly happy if by encouragement and ap- 
proval he is able to assist them to surpass his 
own achievements. Nothing gives finer satisfac- 
tion to a teacher than to be outdone in his own 
specialty by his pupils. 

It is the saving salt of human nature that this 
power of appreciation is greater than the power 
of creation. Men who are themselves weak and 
imperfect in moral achievement, may yet encour- 
age others to better deeds. The earnest approval 
of good men by those less virtuous is a common 
thing, and such approval helps to make the good 
man better. As has been said, " If only those were 
allowed to uphold standards who had demon- 
85 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

strated their ability to live up to them, how our 
reigning ideals would suffer." " Common enough 
is that mild predilection for the right which is 
equal to supporting some one else under tempta- 
tion." 

The cloud of witnesses is not, then, superfluous 
or cumbrous. They give zest to the contestants. 
Their own hopes and broken efforts yet await ful- 
fillment. They are able to appreciate what they 
could not accomplish. Instead of restraining, 
they urge on the battle. Whose heart is not quick- 
ened in him when he takes up his daily task to 
think that there are those who care? Who is not 
strengthened against temptation, even in his soli- 
tude, when he recalls in memory a pure face look- 
ing into his? And who does not feel the stirring 
ardor in a company of human souls assembled in 
a quiet place of worship, striving together in their 
wills to find the way of life and to walk in it? 
Over them brood the spirits of the mighty dead, 
rank on rank massing themselves upward into the 
mystic amphitheater of memory and faith. Who 
does not respond to their presence by some new 
dedication of his being to the race they ran and 
to which they urge us on? 

"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about 
86 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES 

with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside 
every weight, and the sin which doth so easily 
beset us, and let us run with patience the race 
that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author 
and the finisher of our faith." 



REGENERATION 



REGENERATION 

"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." 
John in, 7. 

The sermon is the repetition of the last word — 
Ye must be born again, and again, and again. 
Some commentators observe that a stricter trans- 
lation would be, "Ye must be born anew"; or, 
"Ye must be born from above"; but neither of 
these meanings is inconsistent with the idea of 
continuous regeneration or rebirth, which several 
understand the text to emphasize. The same 
thought often recurs, particularly in the letters 
of St. Paul. He writes to the Roman Christians, 
"Be ye transformed by the renewing of your 
mind"; and to the Ephesians, "Be renewed in 
the spirit of your mind"; and to the Colossians, 
"Lie not to one another seeing that ye have put 
off the old man with his doings, and have put on 
the new man which is being renewed unto knowl- 
edge after the image of Him that created him." 
In the history of Christianity this continuous 
regeneration has sometimes been displaced by the 
idea of a unique, cataclysmic spiritual experience, 
91 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

known as conversion. As one is born into the 
natural world, so, it is contended, one must expe- 
rience a second birth into the spiritual world. 
Whoever knows himself to have experienced this 
regeneration is a Christian and worthy to be a 
member of the visible church, while any one who 
has not felt this inner event remains outside the 
company of the saved. Great agitation arose in 
the early days of this country over the nature and 
necessity of the second birth. The Puritan fathers 
held strongly to the doctrine that the visible 
church should consist of none but evident Chris- 
tians, and none were admitted to the adult mem- 
bership of the churches who could not relate some 
instance of the transforming operation of God in 
their own lives. But their children, educated and 
trained in the Christian faith, moral and earnest 
in their lives, yet frequently could lay claim to no 
such experience as that which their parents had 
called a change of heart, and were not conscious 
of anything they could designate as the work of 
God in their souls. Consequently their right to 
membership in the church was called in question. 
The halfway covenant, as it was called, came into 
use during the seventeenth century. This cove- 
nant permitted such unregenerate members to 
92 



REGENERATION 

remain in the church, and entitled them to trans- 
mit church membership to their children, but it did 
not entitle them to partake of the communion. 
The ambiguities and perplexities of that practice, 
however, were not long endured. Its critics 
charged that the halfway covenant devitalized 
religion and scandalized the church. Jonathan 
Edwards denounced it and the course of strict 
orthodoxy clung to the doctrine of a regenerate 
church membership. 

Essentially the same view of conversion and 
of the necessity of such a regenerate membership 
is still maintained in many churches, and for not 
a few whose theory of the world no longer includes 
original sin and miracles of grace, there yet sur- 
vives the vague feeling that religion is only for 
those who are peculiarly gifted for it or have had 
it thrust upon them by some unusual experience. 
The consequence is that conscientious persons 
sometimes make pathetic efforts to find evidence 
in their lives of a divine visitation, and not in- 
frequently attach undue importance to merely 
incidental and even grotesque phenomena. Thus 
in the great Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky at 
the beginning of the last century, men and women 
thought themselves spiritually transformed be- 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

cause, during the preaching and exhortations, 
they fell down in trances, or jumped about in 
muscular paroxysms, or became subject to what 
was called the "barking exercise." Others re- 
ceived their assurance in the form of visions and 
voices; flashes of light and dreams. 

Equally pathetic have been the negative cases 
of those who sincerely sought some token but 
found none. They were not encouraged to at- 
tach religious importance to those natural im- 
pulses and awakenings which are the normal 
expressions of the spiritual tendencies of human 
nature, and were therefore forced, in spite of their 
moral earnestness and sincere sympathy with 
Christian ideals, to regard themselves as unre- 
generate and unfit for membership in the church. 
One still meets people who explain their aloofness 
from the Church by saying they never experi- 
enced the feeling which they consider as the pri- 
mary requisite. They seem not to imagine that this 
"feeling" may be in any way within their control, 
subject to their own volition and dependent upon 
objective activities and natural relationships. 
Unfortunately in our common English version of 
the New Testament the appeal to become Chris- 
tians is uniformly mistranslated, so that men 
94 



REGENERATION 

read that they are to "be converted"; whereas 
the verb so rendered is active and carries a sum- 
mons to turn, or turn yourselves to God. "In 
the New Testament," says an authority, "con- 
version is always represented as man's act — an 
act of which he is capable under the appeal and 
influence of the truth." 

It is difficult for men to attach the same spirit- 
ual importance to acts which they involuntarily 
perform and those which they deliberately initi- 
ate. Among primitive peoples an entirely dis- 
proportionate value is attributed to involuntary 
acts, such as talking in sleep, or raving in delirium. 
Sneezing, for example, is thought so evidently 
due to a seizure by some spirit that it is commonly 
followed by a salutation and prayer formula pre- 
scribed by custom. Something of this same rev- 
erence for passive states of feeling survives in the 
popular idea that unusual potency and meaning 
belong to spontaneous mental events and to 
ecstatic emotions. 

It is at this point that modern psychology has 
made some of its most important contributions 
to the understanding of religion. It recognizes 
that the soul does experience awakenings, often 
intense and transforming, which are truly new 
95 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

births, and it recognizes that these new births 
occur again and again and again. The period 
of youth is preeminently the time of great emo- 
tional crises, of conversions, of the attainment 
of insight and enthusiasm with reference to all 
racial and social ideals. It is the epoch in which 
the individual not only naturally becomes reli- 
gious, but also patriotic and domestic and so- 
cially enlightened. Under anything like normal 
conditions, youth responds to the moods of na- 
ture, and to the appeals of the great institutions 
of society with a spontaneity and an inner com- 
pulsion which are among the most impressive 
and reassuring phenomena of human life. That 
is the time when men most readily volunteer in 
the service of their country; when they are willing 
to enter upon long and arduous apprenticeships 
for professions and business; when they are 
capable of stupendous deprivations and labors 
through romantic attachments; and when also 
they are most able to be enthralled by the vision 
of a kingdom of utter love and good will among 
men. 

This initial experience may be crucial and de- 
cisive. It may give the set and curve to the whole 
aftercourse of life. Few persons take up new 
96 



REGENERATION 

interests, either ideal or practical, after the period 
of adolescence. It is notoriously difficult to form 
intimate friendships after that time. But even 
in youth these choices are seldom abrupt and 
momentary. They have been prepared for by 
gradual development, by ripening of powers, and 
by cumulative experiences. The records of reli- 
gious awakenings show the influence of environ- 
ment, of early training, of temperament and of 
direct suggestion. They vary as much with refer- 
ence to the duration of the period of inquiry and 
suspense, and the manner of final decision, as do 
the choice of vocations and the formation of life 
partnerships. It is also a notable fact that a 
single conversion, however impressive and au- 
thentic it may seem to be, seldom gives a man 
complete satisfaction and security. Is not the 
literature of personal piety full of misgivings and 
apprehensions concerning the salvation of souls 
which once thought themselves redeemed, but 
have later become perplexed and confused? Do 
they not seek the repetition of the conversion 
experience, with its renewed sense of the divine 
presence and comfort? 

When one compares religious life with intellec- 
tual development or with professional pursuits, 
97 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

the successive stages in all of them seem quite 
similar. The first essential is the development 
of interest in a given direction. It is not so im- 
portant how that interest awakens, if it be genu- 
ine and vital. It may arise from some other per- 
son's urgent persuasion, or from a book one has 
read, or from a character one has admired. The 
momentous question may be decided in a restless 
night of anxiety, or during a quiet walk by the 
seashore, or in a public assembly. There are 
endless variations of circumstance in connection 
with the decision to be a lawyer, a mathematician, 
a Christian. Probably most men could not give 
any clear account of the beginnings of their deep- 
est interests. These interests have sprung from 
familiar associations and have grown strong in 
a congenial atmosphere without much introspec- 
tion or conflict. The investigations of such ex- 
periences show that a painful or ecstatic beginning 
is no more a guaranty of a successful religious 
career than it is of a successful legal or scientific 
career. 

But what is constantly emphasized in all great 

human characters is that they have continually 

met crises and tasks which elicited new powers, 

new manifestations of energy and talent. If the 

98 



REGENERATION 

realms of science and art are so vast and so com- 
plex that they confront the greatest geniuses with 
new levels and unsuspected areas to be possessed, 
it might be expected that religion, comprehend- 
ing, as it does, all the ideal values and relation- 
ships of life, would also offer to common men and 
to spiritual geniuses likewise, perpetual regenera- 
tion and rebirth. In education, a student passes 
from grade to grade; from grammar school to 
high school; from high school to college; from col- 
lege to the university and professional school, 
with every year opening new fields and demand- 
ing inner development and awakening. And at 
its best, life beyond the schools unfolds in epochs 
and opportunities, which, though less formally 
discriminated, are equally real and exacting. 
Religion ought also to be viewed in a similar per- 
spective in order that there might be some rea- 
sonable gradation of spiritual tasks in the fulfill- 
ment of which a man might gain the consciousness 
of mastery and progress. Too many men who 
have graduated from college still possess only a 
kindergarten experience of religion. Strong men 
of affairs, who have made their way into large 
industries and technical arts, cannot be equally 
expert in religion without having lived in its 
99 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

atmosphere and shared in its modern growing 
life. They may not know, for example, what the 
Modernist Movement is, or the new social re- 
ligion which is permeating all the churches, or 
the mighty impetus toward federation and union 
in all denominations, or the awakening energy, 
under the stimulus of international contact, in 
the great world religions. Neither in the realm 
of personal piety, nor of religious theory, nor of 
objective charity and philanthropy have there 
ever been such reasonable and persuasive appeals 
to all classes of good and vigorous men to be born 
again into still larger religious life. 

How, then, may we conceive definitely and 
cogently of this life of the spirit which summons 
us to perpetual regeneration? There are many 
ways of formulating it and of bodying it forth in 
symbol and in deed. I here choose three expres- 
sions for it, intending thereby to release and stim- 
ulate our thought of it, rather than to exhibit 
any set theory or formal pattern. 

First, let us conceive the religious life as sym- 
bolized by Jesus Christ. We think of it, then, as 
loyalty to the principles He taught and the prac- 
tice of such graciousness and such heroic idealism 
as He displayed. We cherish his faith and his 
100 



REGENERATION 

buoyant optimism. We see, with Him, a marvel- 
ous Providence in the laws of nature and in hu- 
man history. We come to believe so profoundly 
in the spiritual qualities of human hearts that we 
see virtues and new moral possibilities in publi- 
cans and sinners. We pray for them that persecute 
us. We cultivate love for our enemies. We set 
before ourselves the kingdom of righteousness and 
peace and joy, and we forego anxious thought for 
any external goods or worldly station. 

When we sin, we think of Christ; how it dis- 
honors Him; how tenderly He forgives us; and 
how He strengthens our wills for better things 
ahead. When life goes utterly against us, for- 
tunes fail, hopes wane, and death waits — then, 
too, we lay hold on Christ, our comforter, our 
strength, and our immortal life. 

All this and far more is Jesus Christ to the liv- 
ing heart of the Church. Men naturally think in 
personal terms, and the personality of Christ for 
these thousands of years has been the central 
figure in the moral and spiritual drama of millions 
of men. When they sinned against other men it 
was against Him too. When they achieved good 
works, it was by his help; and when they faced 
untried ways, He walked by their side. The 
101 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

Church has made its ritual around the events of 
Christ's earthly life, — his birth, death, and resur- 
rection, — and its hymns and prayers witness to 
his living presence in the imagination of the wor- 
shipers. Therefore, it is the simplest and most 
natural statement of what is meant by religion to 
say that it is the life of Christ reproduced in the 
lives of men. It is affection for Him, obedience to 
Him, and faithfulness to his spirit. One cannot 
miss the essential things of religion if he takes it 
in this way, always careful to appreciate the 
breadth and richness of Christ's teaching and the 
continuous development which it enjoins. 

But it is possible also to define religion in quite 
different terms. One may say it is the acceptance 
of the standards and ideals of his family, of his 
teachers, and of the great characters of the day 
in which he lives. Many persons formulate their 
highest values in that way. They appropriate the 
practical precepts and moral principles, without 
the phraseology or forms of piety. There are 
doubtless excellent members of all churches who 
maintain this matter-of-fact attitude. They may 
have little capacity or taste for forms or for doc- 
trinal statements. There are certainly numerous 
excellent Christians who have no musical knowl- 
102 



REGENERATION 

edge or skill, and it is conceivable that similarly 
many lack that vivid imagination and emotional 
power which the fullest use of symbolism and 
ritual involves. If, then, some individuals protest 
that their religion consists in doing the best they 
can to live a good life, according to the standards 
of the best men about them, that cannot lead 
them far astray. It is only necessary that they 
take themselves seriously in that position, and 
feel some moral urgency and responsibility for the 
actual realization of those ideals. No matter how 
adequate the theoretical formulation of religious 
standards may be, it is essential that they appeal 
to the will and thus lead on from one achievement 
to another. It is more important in religion that 
a man follow vigorously whatever ideals he may 
possess, provided they are live and growing ideals, 
than it is that he have superior theories of life 
without the will to pursue them. For when a per- 
son begins to take life seriously at any point, it 
has a marvelous way of leading him on and on 
through birth after birth, into fuller participation 
and into larger relationships. 

A third possible statement of religion is that it 
emphasizes the spiritual qualities of all the great 
constructive interests of society and seeks to 
103 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

organize them into an impressive and inspiring 
unity. Religion is thus viewed as the deepest 
reality in science, in art, and in social relationship. 
The chief concern of science is the discovery 
and presentation of the truth; the great object 
of art is the vision and expression of beauty. 
The saving quality of business is integrity; the 
great quest of industry is efficiency, and the 
one essential of social organization is good will. 
Wherever men are engaged upon the great fun- 
damental human interests, they are occupied 
with the vital things of religion. It is only in the 
vicious and whimsical and purposeless activities 
that religion does not appear, for it cannot exist 
together with the inconsistencies of evil wills, or 
with the caprice of insincere hearts. Religion, at 
its best, exalts the truth of science, the beauty of 
art, the integrity of business, the industry of labor 
and the companionship of love. It seeks the full- 
ness of life. Unlike science or art or industry, it 
cannot be content with a part or with a fragment 
of the whole. It demands all of these together in 
a living organic unity of social action. And this 
unity is nothing forced or artificial. It is a na- 
tural unity which all human life craves. It is the 
oneness of family life, and it is the group con- 
104 



REGENERATION 

sciousness of the patriotic and loyal community 
taken as a whole. It is the function of religion to 
promote and symbolize this unity. The more spe- 
cialized men's pursuits become, the more impor- 
tant is it to make clear the interdependence of 
all individuals in the common life and to attract 
each separate, solitary person into the fellowship 
of the ideal community. 

In some such ways may religion be conceived, 
as loyalty to Jesus Christ, as fidelity to the inher- 
ited social tradition at its best, and as devotion 
to the inner spirit and meaning of special pursuits, 
taken in their natural implications. In all of these 
conceptions there is presented an ideal to be pro- 
gressively realized by the ceaseless renewal and 
development of one's nature, and of the social 
order itself. This process need no longer be 
thought entirely unaccountable or mysterious. 
It takes place in ways which are more and more 
brought into relation with all experiences of intel- 
lectual enlargement and of the strivings of the 
will. So far from being exceptional, such awak- 
enings are normal phenomena of all live and eager 
minds. In the natural course of events every in- 
dividual is subject to many influences which offer 
him entrance into new life. By attention to these 
105 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

and to the stirrings of his soul within him, he may 
learn how to take advantage of them for the re- 
finement of his spiritual nature and the attain- 
ment of a more Christ-like stature. 

The great life of Nature often draws men into 
moods and impulses where new and better worlds 
are made more easily accessible. The poets 
know how to convey the qualities of such mo- 
ments. Thus one writes: — 

"Perchance we first time really see a flower! 

Some inward grandeur — unsuspect — makes cry! 
Or other's nobleness enchains our view! 

In such exquisitely informing hour 
Earth's old futilities pass downcast by, 

And life on sudden takes eternal hue." 

Or, again, it is a great unselfish life silhouetted 
against some vast human need. Such was the in- 
fluence which transformed Stanley when he found 
Livingstone in the heart of Africa. Stanley said: 
"For four months and four days I lived with him 
in the same hut, or in the same tent, and I never 
found a fault with him. I went to Africa a preju- 
diced man against religion, and the worst infidel 
in London. To a reporter like myself, who had 
only to deal with wars, mass meetings, and polit- 
ical gatherings, sentimental matters were quite 
106 



REGENERATION 

out of my province. But there came to me a long 
time of reflection. I was out there away from a 
worldly world. I saw this solitary old man there, 
and I asked myself, 'Why does he stop here? 
What is it that inspires him?' For months after 
we met I found myself listening to him, wondering 
at the old man carrying out the words, 'Leave all 
and follow me.' But little by little, seeing his 
piety, his gentleness, his zeal, his earnestness, and 
how he went quietly about his business, I was con- 
verted by him." 

In conclusion I mention one of the most potent 
and penetrating influences for moral purification 
and renewal — the influence of a company of peo- 
ple brought together and dominated by an ele- 
vating appreciation and a noble purpose. It is 
experienced at times in listening to a great orches- 
tra. The musicians have lived through the day 
quite as other men, worried by little practicalities, 
teaching difficult pupils, meeting creditors, rack- 
ing their minds for some increment of comfort on 
the morrow. Individually, they bear the shifting 
fortunes of fate as best they can, often with dis- 
appointed ambitions, with doubts of themselves 
and of the world, with occasional half -holidays 
and their fitful joys. But now they are parts 
107 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

of the orchestra. They are lifted out of them- 
selves by the theme of the symphony and are 
carried by the very harmony they create into an 
ideal world of beauty and mystery. And that di- 
viner world opens also, in some measure, for all 
who hear what the musicians feel. Fatigue and 
ennui, selfish cares and petty apprehensions are 
forgotten. For the time, the hard lines relax and 
one of the great "melting moods" radiates as by 
one impulse through all hearts. 

Something like that is often achieved for us by 
religion. It gathers our weak and wavering hu- 
man natures around the ancient altars of faith 
and aspiration. It sounds out the great notes of 
forgiveness, of encouragement, of divine com- 
panionship and spiritual renewal. It elevates 
the symbols of sacrificial love and of immortal 
hope. The invisible and eternal things, at other 
times often obscured and forgotten, are now 
brought near and made real again. Every man 
who sincerely yields himself to the influences of 
these hours of worship feels himself quickened and 
ennobled. In such moments the gates of new life 
open and we are born again. 



RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 



RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that 
is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the 
midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 
Gen. in, 9. 

In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was 
there the tree of life. Rev. xxn, 2. 

It is significant that in the first and last books 
of the Bible, the tree of life has a central place. 
It stands in the midst of the Garden of Eden and 
of the heavenly paradise. Religion throughout 
its history is just the quest for life — sometimes 
life on a physical plane, in basket and in store, in 
flocks and fruits of the field, but also at times 
life which is more than meat. In early Hebrew 
tradition, Abraham moved out from his ancestral 
place into a far country, seeking a freer and 
richer life. Moses, summoning the tribes of Is- 
rael, led them toward a more fruitful country, 
toward a land flowing with milk and honey. 
Jesus leads onward in the same great quest 
and from his heart bursts the cry: "I have come 
that ye may have life and have it more abun- 
dantly." 

Ill 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

The deepest thing in all human experience is 
precisely this craving for self-fulfillment, self- 
satisfaction. It is this which has stirred the race 
from its earliest infancy. It is this which pulses 
now in the life of nations. It is this which makes 
us labor, suffer, and aspire. This quest for life 
is the deepest, divinest thing in us, and in its 
intensest, most ideal form, it is the very heart and 
soul of religion. Everything religious is to be in- 
terpreted in terms of this craving. Many people 
take religion mechanically, externally, institu- 
tionally, without any understanding of its inner, 
pulsing spirit. But none of the deeds or doctrines, 
or forms of worship can be at all understood in 
their real meaning except as the expression of this 
will to live, this ceaseless, indomitable instinct 
for life. In the successive ages of man, in the gi- 
gantic struggles which history records, it is hunger 
for the bread of life which throbs at the heart of 
primitive and of spiritual religions. 

Consider deeds. The great question which 
men are always asking is, " What must we do to 
inherit life," or, "What must we do to be saved? " 
The deeds of religion are developed in terms of 
this desire. In the early Hebrew religion, it was 
a matter of cultus. One must observe customary 
112 



RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 

rites, such as sacrifice. One must keep the tra- 
ditions and observe the institutional forms. 

In the time of the great prophets, this mechan- 
ical, external cultus was held not to be sufficient. 
Sacrifices and the observation of mere forms of 
worship were felt to be hindrances and abomina- 
tions. They asked themselves the simple, heart- 
searching question: "What does the Lord thy 
God require of thee, but to do justice, to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" 

When Jesus was asked in his time what a man 
must do in order to gain life, He gave very simple 
answers: Love your neighbor, give to the poor. 
Cultivate gentleness and kindliness, for the world 
suffers because of selfishness, hatred, and narrow- 
ness of heart. Life for each and all is to be found 
in an attitude of neighborliness, of great generos- 
ity, the giving of the best we possess for others. 
The disciples were enjoined to go into all the 
world to tell this message of love and service, in 
order that men everywhere might be healed and 
find health and strength. Men were to be re- 
leased from their prisons, their minds freed from 
hatred and enmity, and their spirits brought into 
the kingdom of fraternity and good will. 

What are the earnest people of our time seeking 
113 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

to do in order to have life? What is the socialist 
seeking to do? What is the modern man trying 
to do with all the resources of science at his com- 
mand? They are seeking just what religionists 
have always been seeking. They are trying to 
enter into greater riches, trying to gain health 
and beauty and a larger use of their powers. So, 
in the world, here and now, and in coming time, 
men shall be able to lay hold on vaster and more 
satisfying treasures of life. The cries of the 
wounded and distressed are the cries of those who 
suffer and are broken by ways which are not re- 
ligious. Sometimes through their own mistakes, 
and often by the sins of others, they are shut out 
from life by injustice and ignorance and narrow 
selfishness. 

The doctrines of religion are also determined 
in terms of this quest for life. What must a man 
believe in order to have abundant life? He must 
believe those things which in his living experience 
are necessary for guidance, for satisfaction, for 
the fulfillment of life in manifold and ideal ways. 
These things change from age to age. An illus- 
tration may be given in terms of belief about 
Jesus Christ. In the apostolic age, men had to 
believe that Christ was raised from the dead; 
114 



RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 

that was the great common belief with refer- 
ence to Him. But it was a faith which involved 
further and more ultimate conviction. Believing 
that Jesus had come to earth to lead men into a 
larger, more adequate life, his resurrection was 
regarded as a sign that accompanied Him, a sym- 
bol of his power and of his possession of God's 
truth. Therefore, belief that Jesus was raised 
from the dead signified faith in Him as the Lord 
of life. 

Later Jesus was regarded as the Divine Logos, 
the Eternal Spirit of the world according to the 
Greek conception. He was the incarnation of this 
Logos, a living word of God. 

Again came an age of conflict, and strife, an 
age when the Church had gained power and was 
able to command legions of mediaeval knights to 
fight its battles. Jesus was believed in at this 
time as a king, a conqueror, riding upon a charger, 
sword in hand, gorgeous with emblems and in- 
signia of power. 

To believe in Christ to-day is to believe in none 
of these things, primarily, but to believe in Him 
with reference to what we are now trying to do. 
How does this age seek life? It seeks life through 
knowledge, through expert acquaintance with the 
115 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

laws of nature. More than ever before, man sets 
for himself the task of understanding the world, 
our human nature, and the scale of our moral 
values. The supreme need is to know what things 
are little and what things are great. Therefore, 
Jesus becomes in this age one who must be be- 
lieved in as a great teacher, as a man of fresh, 
moral insight, as a revealer of the kingdom of 
love and righteousness, and a guide to its fulfill- 
ment. When we seek knowledge and insight with 
reference to the laws of nature and the conduct 
of life, we cannot ask for miracles or for military 
power, but must seek illumination of the mind, 
quickening of spirit, arousing of affection and 
will toward ideal interests. Therefore, Jesus is 
one who proclaims anew the supremacy of truth, 
and declares it to the world now, as to his dis- 
ciples of old. The Church increasingly invites 
people to believe in Christ with reference to this 
greatest, most fundamental need at the present 
time — the need of knowledge and of rational 
ideals of life. 

The same principle may be illustrated by other 
great doctrines of the Church. Belief in the Scrip- 
tures at one time involved a belief in many formal 
statements about the Scriptures, even faith in 
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RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 

verbal inspiration. For many people, faith in the 
uniform and equal authority of the different 
books of the Bible is essential to their belief in the 
book as an unique revelation of God's will. On 
the other hand, to increasing numbers of Chris- 
tians, faith in the Scriptures means faith in them 
as a body of literature in which is recorded the 
spiritual experiences of the Hebrew people and of 
the early Christian Church, struggling to attain 
life for the race and for the community. Modern 
belief in the Scriptures is belief in them as an illu- 
minating record of that great Hebraic quest for 
life. The Scriptures disclose to sensitive, alert 
minds the fundamental realities of spiritual ex- 
perience. In them are many suggestions, many 
dramatic incidents by which our minds and 
hearts are quickened in the pursuit of the noblest 
ideals. There is nothing hard and fast, nothing 
mechanical or literal about them. They are always 
revealing the great, urgent need of the human 
heart for infinite reality. 

It is the same with reference to our belief in 
God. Some past beliefs in God are so antago- 
nistic, so repugnant to present views, that to 
believe them would make us worse than infidels. 
They belong to faiths upon which the human 
117 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

heart once rested, but which no longer inspire us. 
To-day, chiefly in the social relations of human 
beings, such as parent and child, and friend -with 
friend, we find that idea of God which satisfies 
our deepest needs and which may be believed in 
without doing injury to the other things which 
we know to be true. 

Forms of worship, like deeds and beliefs, also 
rise in the quest for life and have value as they 
express it and sustain it. Perhaps the Church, in 
its practices of worship, may be best understood 
when thought of as a company of people who are 
searching everywhere for those things that give 
the greatest health and power and efficiency to 
all human beings. Thinking of the Church thus, 
as a company of people who would like to know 
what is best to do, and what is the most helpful 
to believe, inspiration and spiritual health are 
found in its services. In the work-a-day world 
we are confronted constantly by failure and by 
the tragedies of life which break our hearts and 
humble us to the dust. They cast clouds over us 
and we cannot see our way. Then we come to the 
Church and dramatize in imagination the great, 
vivid, appealing experiences of the race at its 
best. We sing, "Come ye disconsolate, where'er 
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RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 

ye languish," as though here, in this moment, we 
were in close and vital communion with the un- 
diminished forces and agencies of the spiritual 
universe. By reaffirming in hymns and prayers 
and meditations the achievements of the past, 
and the hopes of our hearts, we are able to see the 
meaning of life again, to see it steadily and to see 
it whole. We are able to assess the experiences 
through which we have come, reverses of fortune, 
disasters and tragedies, faults and sins, and to rise 
above them. Through the way of suffering love 
and new resolves, we come to regard them as 
incidents, as events which do not count, as things 
which, at most, only discipline us, and give us 
more adequate capacity for the finer, more satis- 
fying things of life. The ritual, stately and re- 
fined, is precisely the dramatization of these great 
crucial moments of adventure, of defeat and re- 
covery in the soul's unresting aspiration. When 
we sympathetically open our hearts, and go into 
a place of worship, participate in the spirit of the 
service, if not always in the literal thought and 
language, share in the moods that vibrate through 
the prayers, and follow the minister's words, 
in their ideal intent, is it not true that we find 
ourselves back upon the heights where the visions 
119 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

of life come clear and shining, full of fascinating 
grandeur and sublimity? This state is no mere 
emotional ecstasy, but a certain, convincing reaf- 
firmation of the things which the best and greatest 
minds of the world have found good and beautiful. 

It is just a clearer view of the things which 
the people who seemed to have least of them af- 
firmed to be the best. It has often happened in 
the history of religion that those individuals who 
have had the most reverses, the least success, the 
smallest share of material goods, have been the 
people in whom the spiritual vision was clearest. 
But at times, also, people surfeited with outward 
goods, understand, too, these things upon which 
souls are truly nourished. These are the things 
which wise parents crave for their children. 
These are the things to which a man clings when 
death confronts him. These are the things which 
are always emerging out of our experience, tran- 
scending all the levels of cant, of superstition, and 
of sacerdotalism. These are the eternal values of 
the divine life in the soul of man. 

Religious services are the means by which con- 
gregations of people in pursuit of life's ideals take 
their reckonings. It is like looking at our watches 
to see what time it is; or employing a compass to 
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RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 

ascertain the direction in which we are traveling; 
or surveying a map to discern the thoroughfares 
through which our journey runs. This experience 
of public religious worship is, in its largest sense, 
no mere aesthetic indulgence, no mere recreation of 
mind or heart. It is an unfolding of life, a moving 
experience of the things upon which our most vital 
interests turn. They challenge us to the one great 
adventure in which all the energies and treasures 
of life are most worthily employed. 

Our life, as it commonly lies before us, is dis- 
torted. It is fragmentary and inconsequential. 
Social institutions seem to stand in isolation and 
to go on independently of each other. People 
look at educational institutions and say, "Knowl- 
edge is here." They go to the bureau of charities 
and exclaim, "Good deeds are here." They go 
to the drama and say, "The arts are here." It is 
true that the school communicates intelligence, 
the bureau of charities administers aid, and the 
stage is the dramatization of human experience. 
But none of these is adequate by itself. They 
need to be brought together, to be unified, to be 
given organic relation to a total life process. Re- 
ligion has always sought to achieve such unity 
and to make it effective, in fact and in symbol. 
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THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

The Church is beginning to fulfill once more this 
ancient function. It is claiming the august and 
significant place which it once occupied, but it 
does so in a new spirit and in ampler fashion. 
More than any other institution, it seeks to com- 
bine all ideal interests and to make them vital for 
individuals of all types and classes. He is not re- 
ligious who is just intellectual or merely philan- 
thropic, or exclusively artistic. The religious man, 
ideally conceived, gathers all these impulses into 
a living experience, full of intense feeling, noble 
thought and beautiful expression. 

In the recent holiday season, there were muni- 
cipal Christmas trees in many places over the 
country. In some communities, questions arose 
as to whether these Christmas trees were religious 
or civic. Churchmen often insisted that they must 
be regarded as religious, while the civic author- 
ities contended that they were secular. As a 
result of such controversy, it may have hap- 
pened (as so often and so tragically happens) 
that the good thing itself was made impossible 
by the contention over it. But these Christmas 
trees could not be civic in the best sense without 
being religious, nor could they be most truly re- 
ligious without being communal. The Christmas 
122 



RELIGION AS THE QUEST FOR LIFE 

tree embodies the ideals of community life at its 
best. It is representative of youth, of cheer, and 
of good will. It is a symbol of the new civic con- 
science, of the new ideals permeating the whole 
people. Were religion divorced from civic and 
patriotic interests, it would become a meaningless 
travesty. These two things are one. The aspira- 
tions which pulse through civic life, toward neigh- 
borhood and individual welfare, toward more ade- 
quate living, and more satisfying conditions for 
all the people of the community, these are the 
objectives of religion. They express the quest for 
life, the embodiment of the dreams, longings, and 
aspirations of our nature, upon which religion 
founds itself and upon which alone it can keep 
itself fresh, vital, and significant. 

This ancient yet ever present quest for life re- 
news itself in our experience to-day and promises 
a fulfillment such as it has never had before, a ful- 
fillment in which human aspiration, freer from 
prejudice and from pettiness and triviality, will 
rise to a new dignity and express itself in more 
commanding, satisfying forms of art. Then re- 
ligion will speak more urgently to men's souls, 
will inspire them anew, and will gather them into 
its holy places for refreshment and comfort, for 
123 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

inspiration and hope. To religion, men will con- 
tinue to turn to know what they ought to do, 
what they should believe, and to anticipate in 
imagination the fulfillment of the kingdom of 
righteousness and love. 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

The word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, 
that thou mayest do it. Deut. xxx, 14. 

The text belongs to an age when the word of God 
was not identified with a book or a compilation 
of books, so much as with the living voice of con- 
science and aspiration. Although written records 
existed of which the Book of Deuteronomy itself 
is a notable example, yet the "word" was pri- 
marily something spoken. It was vocal and vi- 
brant. The criteria by which these words of the 
mind's flowing thought are tested cannot be the 
same as the criteria usually employed to deter- 
mine the genuineness of documents. After one has 
discovered the age of a written record, its author- 
ship and its literary construction, one has yet to 
ask its meaning and its value. The words must be 
made vocal again and allowed to speak to the 
mind and heart as they did to the first men who 
cherished them. 

The Bible does not claim to present all truth. 
Even the world itself could not contain the books 
necessary for that. Nor is everything which the 
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THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

Bible records, true. The earth is not flat and the 
world is not likely to come to an end soon. The 
Bible, like all other great collections of books, 
contains divine words among many which are not 
divine. It does not distinguish these by any in- 
fallible marks and we are forced to seek out for 
ourselves some means of determining their value. 
We need tests which are applicable, not only to 
the Bible, but also to the Vedas, to the Koran, to 
modern literature, and to living oral speech. Our 
age craves practical, empirical tests which afford 
the sense of reality even if they yield results which 
are tentative and incomplete. 

The text itself suggests such a method for dis- 
covering the true word of God. "The word is 
very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy 
heart." This assertion may be taken either as 
descriptive of something one already knows, or 
as the means of discovering what is not clearly 
defined. In the latter case, the meaning is clearer 
when the sentence is inverted to read: "That 
word which is nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and 
in thy heart" is the word. This would mean that 
whatever word is intimate and vital and com- 
manding is the true word. There are other texts 
which are similarly illuminating when inverted. 
128 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

Take the one which compares the word of God to 
a two-edged sword. One here gets the emphatic 
assurance that a word which is quick and powerful 
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing 
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, 
and of the joints and marrow, and is a discoverer 
of the thoughts and intents of the heart, is the 
word of God. 

In another passage, it is said that all Scripture, 
given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doc- 
trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
in righteousness. In that form the statement has 
been the subject of endless theological discussion. 
It has been agreed that all Scripture given by 
inspiration should be profitable in these ways, but 
the question keeps reappearing, What Scripture 
is really given by inspiration? How much simpler 
it is to take the predicate of the sentence as a gen- 
uine definition of the subject. Then it means that 
all Scripture which is profitable for doctrine, for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction in right- 
eousness is given by the inspiration of God. 
When the Psalmist says, "The entrance of thy 
words giveth light," we confidently believe him 
to mean that all light-giving words are divine. 
Again, he exclaims, "Thy word is a lamp unto my 
129 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

feet and a light unto my path," and we cannot 
be mistaken if we conclude that whatever illu- 
minates our way and guides our steps is thereby 
proved to be divine. 

The inversion of these familiar texts enables 
us to take our stand within immediate experi- 
ence and to select as divine that which is best in 
that experience. The author of Deuteronomy 
evidently endeavored to impress this fact. God's 
word is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. 
It is not in heaven or beyond the sea. The di- 
vine word is not a mystery which only persons 
of peculiar gifts may discover. It is at the heart 
of every man's deepest conviction. You may 
call it conscience, or the voice of duty, or one's 
most ideal interest, or one's notion of being a 
gentleman. It is not the exclusive possession of 
great men, or of fortunate men, or of learned men. 
It certainly is not the prerogative of "psychics," 
or of neurotics, or of ignoramuses. It speaks in 
every heart. All appeals to the masses presuppose 
their capacity to hear it. All education strives 
to quicken the power of the common mind to 
appreciate it. All religion which is vital and 
satisfying speaks and understands this univer- 
sal language. 

130 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

The text gives a characterization of the divine 
word by which it may be distinguished and recog- 
nized. It is intimate and vital; it is warm with 
the heart's burning passion; it is capable of ful- 
fillment in noble action. These qualities may be 
variously paraphrased. Three terms from our 
daily experience are here selected. They are in- 
tended to emphasize that nearness and depth and 
utility of the inspired word which so impressed 
the writer of Deuteronomy. We may affirm then, 
that the word of God is serious; that it is sane; 
and that it is enduring. 

The word of God is a serious word. It is earn- 
est and important. It cannot be insincere nor 
idle nor capricious. Small talk and curious gos- 
sip do not utter it. The serious word concerns 
our main purposes, the ends and interests with 
which we feel our deeper selves involved. The 
lighter moods are natural enough and quite inev- 
itable. Much may be said in their behalf. Man's 
life is not all of a piece. One cannot always 
be his best and greatest self. There are lesser 
selves which take their turns. In many moments 
we are only at play. We assume a role. We jest. 
We play the Devil's advocate. In each charac- 
ter one hears and speaks the language which 
131 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

that character demands. Nor are these charac- 
ters confused. Every one knows how to allow 
for casual remarks at tea-parties and on gala 
days. But when the hour strikes, the player 
throws aside the mask and resumes the serious 
task. He is again in earnest and his will strives 
once more toward its goal. Now the greater 
words are demanded. There must be no false 
commands, nor any failure to respond. Noth- 
ing but the truth will satisfy. The words spoken 
by a business man over his desk in his busy hours 
have the edge and thrust of reality. His person- 
ality is stamped on them. He must redeem them 
later. So it is with the locomotive engineer at the 
throttle. So it is with the physician bending over 
his patient. Each, at his task, devoutly attends 
to all that he hears and urgently seeks the truest 
word which can be found. Such words have struc- 
ture and stability. When weighed against the 
drifting images of reverie, they are real and sub- 
stantial. 

The greater the crisis, the more important words 
become. When Moses had brought the Israelites 
within sight of the promised land, he was required 
to let them go forward without him. He had led 
them through hunger and plague and war. Many 
132 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

times they had lost heart and rebelled. How 
could these wayward, impulsive people be made 
loyal and courageous for the task before them? 
The writer of Deuteronomy saw that moment in 
all its tremulous urgency. He felt that it was of 
vast and cosmic significance. Heaven and earth 
were called to witness. It was an occasion of life 
and death, of blessing and cursing, a moment for 
the word of the ancient covenant and of the 
inmost conscience to be recognized as the very 
word of God. 

In the crises of personal history, also, the se- 
rious things are said. On the day when the son 
is leaving home to try his fortunes in the open 
places of the world, the father yearns to sink a 
word deep into the boy's heart. It is likely to be 
the word he heard from his father, which experi- 
ence has only enhanced and brightened. Or it is 
the word which good friends speak to each other 
in the mellow moods of comradeship. The trust- 
ful, confiding hour in which souls unburden them- 
selves and hold no reservations is the hour of 
divine speech. There is a peculiar quality of tone 
and accent at such moments which baffles all de- 
scription, but it is the quality known to the heart 
itself. One sometimes suddenly becomes aware 
133 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

of this deeper note of candor and sincerity in a 
conversation. At first, there is the casual air, 
the natural remoteness and austerity which is the 
conventional habit of civil folk. Without any 
warning or conscious intent, at the mention of a 
name or a past event, the real communion of 
souls sets in. By a strange shift, not unlike the 
half-pleasant sensation of being lowered quickly 
in an elevator, the conversation descends to a 
profounder depth. No extraneous assurances are 
asked or given. The two souls are sure of each 
other directly and unhesitatingly. The word 
they convey and cherish in subdued breath, but 
with inner abandon, is a word with a divine seri- 
ousness and charm. In after moments they will 
remember it. In periods of silence and loneliness 
that memory will radiate warmth and healing 
light. 

This depth and intensity of meaning is the reli- 
gious quality. Nowhere is it profounder than in 
that crucial moment when the troubled soul, con- 
scious of its guilt and sincerely penitent, hears the 
words of forgiveness and comfort. When the 
child, disregarding his father's will, and, suffering 
in folly and waywardness, comes to himself and 
turns back toward the outstretched arms of love 
134 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

then he begins to know what the word of God is. 
It is the word of compassion and pity which a hu- 
man father finds welling up in his heart for the 
son that was lost and is found. It is the word 
which reconciles estranged friends. That word 
works miracles in him who utters it and in him 
who receives it. No other sign is necessary. It 
carries its own evidence. The joy which flows 
from it proves its nature. The peace and power 
which it brings are marks of its divinity. 

Jesus seemed at times to be amazed at the 
words of compassion and assurance which He 
spoke to the wayward and the weak. They were 
not his own but another's. "The words that I 
speak unto you I speak not of myself." "The 
word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's 
who sent me." That is the natural impression 
every sensitive mind still receives upon reading 
the conversations of Jesus at the supreme crises 
of life. We still cherish what He said to mothers 
about their little ones; what He said to young 
men seeking eternal life; what He said to the 
weary and heavy-laden; what He said to the mul- 
titudes on the mountain at the beginning of his 
ministry; and what He said at last from the 
cross itself. 

135 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

The word of God is a sane and solving word. 
It is not the utterance of haste or anger. Nor 
is it the exclamation of the mystic or the eccentric 
person. Deliberation and consistency belong to 
it. The divine word gives light. It shows the way 
and reveals the path. 

On this account, the Beatitudes are divine 
words. They are guides to happiness and to 
blessedness. Men crave satisfaction. They seek 
the way to it. In their confusion and short- 
sightedness, they ponder over the problem. The 
books of religion and philosophy are multiplied 
in the search. Many vain and empty words con- 
cerning it are spoken by false prophets and by 
blind guides. These words of Jesus are novel with 
the grace of simplicity and the charm of solving 
wisdom. They reaffirm the clearest lessons of 
experience, namely, that docile and reverent 
souls possess the means of true power; that eager 
and hungry spirits gain spiritual satisfactions; 
that to the merciful, mercy is given and that the 
pure in heart see God. Christianity is itself good 
proof of the validity of these sayings, for it has 
always been most completely satisfying and most 
successful when it most adequately exemplified 
these principles. The early Christians often gave 
136 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

evidence by their character that they had found 
solving answers to life's deepest needs. "They 
were generally quite commonplace and unim- 
portant people with a treasure in earthen ves- 
sels. Their message they put in various ways, 
with the aphasia of ill-educated men, who have 
something to tell that is far too big for any words 
at their command. But they were astonishingly 
upright, pure, and honest; they were serious; and 
they had in themselves inexplicable reserves of 
moral force and a happiness far beyond anything 
that the world knew." 

Experience is the final test. The words which 
prove true are of God. "And if thou say in thine 
heart, How shall we know the word which the 
Lord hath not spoken? When the prophet speak- 
eth in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, 
nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord 
hath not spoken." 

It is also evident that the word of God is 
found close to the living needs of the human 
heart. The word men crave is the one which will 
be the solvent for their present perplexity and 
doubt. That is the comforting assurance about 
the deepest hunger and thirst. Its very intensity 
is a kind of guarantee that it will be satisfied. 
137 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

Sometimes our anxiety is met by the warning 
that we are anxious about the wrong things. 
To have the direction of our desires changed is 
often their best fulfillment. But when the needs 
are vital, when they are not self-centered or 
concerned with artificial interests, then they are 
tokens of truth about to be discovered. Again 
and again the prophets of modern science have be- 
sought nature for knowledge and have found it. 
They have watched and waited, they have delved 
and tested, they have literally suffered and ago- 
nized in the search for the cause and cure of dis- 
eases which waste human life. Again and again 
they have succeeded, and now sober men of sci- 
ence look forward to the elimination and destruc- 
tion of all contagious scourges and plagues. 

Such experiences give man new confidence in 
his arduous pursuit of wisdom. As he centers 
his interest upon the great cause of human wel- 
fare, he gains assurance in the quest for truth. 
God seems to speak to him with greater clear- 
ness and with a fuller revelation when he craves 
knowledge which serves the deepest needs of men. 
Perhaps it is this which gives such vitality to the 
movements for social justice, world peace, and 
universal education. These mount the highways 
138 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

on which men have always been enveloped by the 
greatest light. Here they have gained the highest 
and most useful revelations. Here they have at- 
tained sane and solving words, full of inexhaust- 
ible blessing and satisfaction. 

The word of God is an enduring word. It en- 
dures not because of any extraneous quality but 
because of its inherent vitality. It proves itself 
time after time in the life of successive generations. 
It is cherished like all useful things because it 
commends itself directly to the judgment and ex- 
perience of men. When Jesus spoke to the com- 
mon people, they heard Him gladly. His stories 
went home to their hearts. He spoke as one hav- 
ing authority. He knew deeply and intimately 
their needs and what would satisfy them. His 
sayings have therefore been repeated from friend 
to friend and from father to son. Disciples of 
Jesus through the centuries have surrendered 
their own comfort and endured untold hardships 
in order to carry his words to the ends of the 
earth. Any words which have this power to win 
men to their perpetuation, are worthy to be called 
divine. For these words have never been profit- 
able in a worldly way. At first hearing they 
have not been popular. They have struck at 
139 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

ancient customs and ancestral faiths; they have 
denounced many forms of personal pleasure; they 
have imposed burdens and crosses and still men 
have clung to them and passed them on to those 
they loved. 

Words which commend themselves in this way 
to the deep and continuous experience of men 
show themselves thereby to belong to the body of 
divine truth. And any words which are heard now 
for the first time and shall continue to repeat 
themselves with such wealth of affection and such 
mastery of men's wills, may thereby be known to 
be the words of God. If a scientist makes a new 
experiment in his laboratory and furnishes a clear 
record of it, he has added to the sum of knowl- 
edge. He has achieved something which is true 
for everyone else who is concerned with that 
problem. In that sense his discovery is absolutely 
and universally true. And if in addition to being 
true, it is also of vast importance to the welfare 
of mankind, as the discovery of the cause of can- 
cer would be, then it takes on religious signifi- 
cance and may be devoutly felt to be the very 
word of God. 

Those who believe that God still speaks to men 
are able to find confirmation in many historical 
140 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

occasions. For at these times, words have been 
spoken which are so serious, so solving and so per- 
sistently true to experience that they are thereby 
judged to be divine. The process of bringing this 
word to clear expression and full definition is 
often long and tragic. It was so with reference 
to human slavery. Men were slow to perceive 
the truth about it. There are individuals yet 
who do not recognize it, but there is no civilized 
nation which has not put itself on record as 
to what the word of God is concerning slavery. 
Other revelations concerning social justice are 
surely being given to those races which are most 
sincerely endeavoring to find them and to live 
by them. It is not, then, the mere age of words 
which proves them. They must also have radiat- 
ing, social vitality. They must live in the minds 
of great souls, affording power and satisfaction. 
Unfortunately not all men strive to attain and 
utilize the highest forms of truth any more than 
they strive for the highest works of art. Men of 
base impulses may deny the truth. Persons of 
irresponsible wills cannot be the patrons of prac- 
tical ideals. Those who have no hunger or thirst 
cannot know the great satisfactions. Only seri- 
ous men, bearing genuine responsibilities, are ap- 
141 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

preciative of the divine word. They are therefore 
the ones to whom it comes. They are the bearers 
of revelation in religion, in science and in social 
justice. They constitute the successive companies 
of prophets. Through their search for the light, 
they gain illumination and they hand on the 
torch to other eager hands uplifted to receive it. 
This light, borne forward by loyal souls faithful 
to the path it shows, is the true and living light 
of the word of God. 

This word is never to be measured by the par- 
ticular, external form in which it comes. It may 
come in a burning bush, or in a dream, or in the 
beautiful personality of a friend. We are less 
likely to expect it in some strange experience 
than were men of old. The commonplace, familiar 
means of knowledge have risen to the dignity of 
heavenly messengers. God's truth emerges out 
of reasoned thoughts and out of disciplined efforts 
of will. It lies on the open page of many a book. 
It throbs in the news of the day. Where more 
clearly may one find the shattered illusions of 
mere pleasure or the agony of tragic selfishness and 
greed? Daily life swells with the vast tides of the 
fathomless sea of the moral universe. Out of its 
depths come good and ill in bewildering profusion. 
142 



WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD? 

But on every hand are interpreters and guides, 
keepers of the hard-won knowledge of good and 
evil. The teacher of little children, the judge of 
the court of law, the artist at the shrine of beauty 
— each utters the divine word. Friends earnestly 
conversing, mother and child embracing, lovers 
radiant with joy, share with each other its infinite 
glory and power. 



THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN 
RELIGION 



THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN 
RELIGION 

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, 
neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon 
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Matt, vi, 28, 29. 

Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth 
us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and 
yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? 
John, iv, 8, 9. 

The mystical quality in life and religion is the 
charm, the glamour, the fresh depth and meaning 
which the world takes on at times. In these fine 
days of May, the experience is everywhere trans- 
piring. Can one look out upon lilac bushes in 
bloom and not feel the fresh spirit in the world? 
Can one see children dancing round the May- 
pole without a sense of buoyancy and of the per- 
ennial newness of life? This quality is experienced 
in connection with the commonest things, as when 
one views athletes stripped for the race; or looks 
down a long, shady path in the woods, or remem- 
bers such a path ; or sees a sunset, the whole west 
aflame with the eternal miracle of the fading day. 
147 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

As you have gone down a busy street, have you 
never seen a flock of pigeons with the purple 
sheen upon their necks? Any day you may see 
goldfish swimming in clear water. On rainy 
nights you may see the lamps down an avenue of 
the city, covering the wet pavement with shim- 
mering figures of light. Or you have seen the 
lights along the far-stretching shore as you sailed 
into the harbor after long absence from home. 

This quality is also felt in a circle of friends 
round the hearth, who talk together intimately. 
If they speak of those who were of the company 
in other days, the faces come back to memory. 
The voices, dress, and gestures appear through 
the vista of years with all the old gracious fas- 
cination. There is a mysterious, subtle sense of 
their presence, accompanied by the lifting of the 
horizon. Many have this sense of presence and 
vanishing horizons when they gather in places of 
worship, or when alone they read the fourteenth 
chapter of John, or the twenty-third Psalm. This 
is the value of Christ to myriads of men. The 
thought of Him brightens the world, lightens the 
burdens, and makes life radiant. He has the effect 
of a living, beloved companion. In his presence 
nothing is dull or flat. Routine tasks pulse with 
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THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 

interest and the worn paths gain beauty and 
splendor. "A devout man," says Thomas a 
Kempis, " beareth everywhere about him his own 
comforter, Jesus, and saith unto Him, 'Be Thou 
present with me, O Lord Jesu, in every time and 
place.'" 

Others experience this depth and charm of life 
most when they commune with God, the infinite 
spirit, the life of nature, the unworn energy and 
beauty of the world. To Emerson it was the Over- 
Soul, " within which every man's particular being 
is contained and made one with all other; that 
common heart, of which all sincere conversation 
is the worship, to which all right action is sub- 
mission; that overpowering reality which con- 
futes our tricks and talents, and constrains every 
one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his 
character and not from his tongue; and which 
evermore tends and aims to pass into our thought 
and hand, and become wisdom and virtue and 
power and beauty. We live in succession, in di- 
vision, in parts, in particles. Meantime, within 
man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the 
universal beauty, to which every part and particle 
is equally related; the eternal ONE." 

This is the mystical quality in life and religion. 
149 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

Persons differ greatly with reference to the ob- 
jects which occasion it and they differ also in the 
intensity and frequency of the experience. It is 
susceptible of cultivation, though it seems to 
come from afar, independently of one's will or 
circumstance. It is often sought in strange and 
inaccessible places, although it is available in the 
humblest home, if love and loyalty dwell there. 
This quality is especially characteristic of the re- 
ligious life just because religion is concerned with 
the deep and intimate experiences. Religion puts 
little things in a big perspective : views simple acts 
of the moment under the form of eternity. It, 
therefore, gives play to the imagination and to 
the great emotions. Sentiments of wonder and 
surprise and deep tenderness blend in the mystical 
feeling. It is more than aesthetic delight, for it 
suggests the presence of the infinite and the di- 
vine. Wherever these emotions and this sense 
of presence occur, the devout heart exclaims: 
"Surely the Lord is in this place: this is none 
other than the house of God and the gate of 
heaven." 

This mystical quality flowers out of all experi- 
ence which is vital and serves ideal ends. It ac- 
companies the fulfillment of all deep-reaching, 
150 



THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 

highly valued interests. The deeds of patriots are 
aglow with it. The memory of heroes begets it. 
The whole nation felt it yesterday when the 
veterans marched and the graves of their com- 
rades were embowered once more. It is not neces- 
sary to search for the springs of this wistful, in- 
spiring elevation of soul beyond and above the 
real world in which we live. Too often the mystic 
has made just that vain effort. He has struggled 
and prayed and disciplined himself to find the 
infinite apart from everything finite. The whole 
without parts, substance without form, the uni- 
versal without particulars, the absolute without 
anything relative, has often been the mystic's 
impossible demand. 

In the company of the disciples of Jesus, one 
heart was fixed for a time, at least, upon that 
illusion. Philip said to Jesus, near the very end, 
" Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Jesus 
never answered any one with a deeper note of 
pained surprise than when He replied, "Have I 
been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father: and how sayest thou then, Shew us 
the Father?" The God of Jesus is one who is 
revealed in his children : not one concealed from 
151 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

them. All men are sons of God and every son re- 
veals the nature of his father. Some are, indeed, 
better sons than others, and they show more 
fully what the nature of God is, but it was the 
conviction of Jesus that the common man has 
something divine about him. He is of infinite 
worth, his soul outweighs all the world beside, and 
whoever looks upon him sees the very image and 
likeness of God. The purity of heart, the patient 
love, the toiling energy of will which we see among 
the poor and humble, and among the mighty men 
of earth, are the clear and shining proofs that the 
divine nature does not hide itself or dwell apart 
from us. 

And this mystical quality is attainable through 
the normal powers and functions of our human 
nature. The traditional mystic discounts the 
senses, saying these are subject to illusion and 
therefore cannot disclose reality. The reason, 
likewise, he abandons because it moves, step by 
step, to its goal; and because it views a thing al- 
ways in relation to something else. At most, the 
senses and the intellect furnish a kind of broken 
ladder from which a leap is made beyond the do- 
main of reason. The mystics have, accordingly, 
been noted for their insistent use of non-rational 
152 



THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 

means, — dreams, trances, hallucinations, and 
magic formulae, in the old days; and occultism, 
hypnotism, auto-suggestion, "instinct," "intui- 
tion," and "feeling," in the present day. Yet in 
reality the normal processes of intelligent action, 
of sane social cooperation, and of idealized sensu- 
ous symbolism furnish far more satisfaction and 
a more adequate sense of God, and make God 
more available for well-balanced human beings, 
than all the devices, asceticisms, and emotional- 
ism of conventional mysticism could do. 

Man's whole being is involved in every great 
and satisfying experience. When the notes of a 
hymn, pealing forth from the chimes at the close 
of the day, suddenly transport one into a mood 
of tenderness and peace, that mystical effect 
involves sense and imagination and the long cul- 
tural and sentimental associations so dominant 
over the emotions. It may seem to be an effect 
quite disproportionate to such a cause and it is 
doubtless beyond any scientist's or poet's power 
fully to explain, yet it has transpired through 
normal means and within a widely familiar field 
of experience. We do not add to its meaning by 
ignoring its naturalness or by ascribing it to 
occult causes. Neither do we lessen its fascina- 
153 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

tion or its reality by a truthful description. 
Rather do we gain control of it as an event sub- 
ject to laws and materials. And in controlling it, 
we may again make the chimes ring and set the 
old hymn running in a thousand souls, where it 
wakens, as before, memories and consolations 
and deep serenity. 

We do not discredit our sense and our wit in 
order to attain the joys yielded by a sonata or a 
poem, nor should we suppose it possible to achieve 
the true blessedness of religion by suppressing 
or transcending our natural endowments. It is 
doubtless the old assumption of the essential sin- 
fulness and depravity of human nature which 
has led so many mystics to renounce ordinary 
knowledge as incompetent to deal with actual 
reality. But now that we think better of our- 
selves, we have more confidence in our natural 
powers, especially when these are trained and ex- 
panded. The miracles of science are so much 
vaster and so much more verifiable than the mir- 
acles of magic, that we gain respect for reason and 
perception and imagination by which science dis- 
covers its marvels and creates its phenomenal 
results. It is by means of these natural powers 
also that the workaday world has been trans- 
154 



THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 

formed. Just as the artificial lights that man has 
invented have carried the day into the night and 
have made fairy gardens out of places of abysmal 
darkness, so man's more adequate knowledge of 
the moral laws enables him to extend their con- 
trol over the world with a new wealth of joy and 
beauty. 

The romance and glamour which the mystics 
have sought so strangely and nourished so ardu- 
ously is not so uncommon and so delicate a 
growth as they think. It springs out of every 
noble companionship and accompanies all ad- 
venturous achievement. The mystic of the con- 
ventional type is apparently under the same 
illusion as the habitual pleasure-seeker. The 
search for pleasure is always disappointing when 
one makes it the main object. Only when he for- 
gets himself in some objective and disinterested 
activity does the pleasure-lover find himself ex- 
periencing pleasure. One must abandon himself 
to his work, to nature, to other people, in order 
to be happy. And in like manner, one must trust 
life, enter into it, battle for it, in order to feel 
the power and the mystery and the deep satisfac- 
tions of it. Pleasure does not exist by itself. It 
is always an accompaniment, an incident, a 
155 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

by-product. We have as many kinds of pleasures 
as we have interests and activities — the pleas- 
ures of reading, of travel, of friendship, of work; 
but there is no pleasure in general or in isolation. 
Similarly, the mystical thrill and ecstasy cannot 
be made an end in itself. It is a result, an ac- 
companiment, an incident of all rich and noble 
living. It is not something men are in danger of 
losing because they do not seek it. They are more 
likely to miss it by direct efforts to gain it, as the 
pitiful history of many mystics proves. Multi- 
tudes of other religionists without any such 
agony of introspection, or tumultuous uncertain- 
ties of spirit, have gone nobly forth to toil for 
truth and for the gleam of an ideal, and have 
found their hearts strengthened and quieted by 
conscious oneness with God. 

Hence it turns out that pleasures come less to 
the pleasure-seekers than to heroes and patriots, 
to toiling mothers and brawny laborers. This 
mystical quality of life is constantly achieved by 
the plain and patient servant of Jesus Christ, who 
endures hardness like a good soldier and all the 
time rejoices in the comradeship and in the vic- 
tories at hand. In the gospels of the New Testa- 
ment, the emphasis is placed on the work to be 
156 



THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 

done, the cross to be borne, the healing of the 
sick, the cure of minds, the conquest of pride and 
covetousness and violence. When the sons of 
Zebedee were brought to Jesus, craving the hon- 
ors and emotions of distinguished places in his 
kingdom, Jesus at once centered their attention 
upon the immediate duties and difficulties. " Are 
you able," said he, to "drink of the cup that I 
shall drink of, and to be baptized with the bap- 
tism that I am baptized with? " It was to the 
same mistaken ambition that Jesus said, "He 
that would be greatest among you, let him be the 
servant of all." Everywhere, as in the Beati- 
tudes, he made blessedness depend upon purpose, 
disposition, and deeds. He never put the emo- 
tional satisfaction forward by itself. He taught 
men to know the truth, to do the divine will, to 
love their neighbors. He never feared that life 
would become dull or stale if they did those 
things. On the contrary, they would have the sense 
of the divine presence, and would be conscious 
of citizenship in an eternal kingdom, destined to 
rule eventually all the kingdoms of this world. 

It becomes evident that one may appreciate 
and experience the mystical quality in religion 
without becoming a mystic, just as one may 
157 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

respect and employ reason without being a "ra- 
tionalist." There are many analogies of this 
kind. A man may believe in freedom of thought 
and cultivate it without being a "freethinker." 
Many persons believe in socializing industry and 
politics who are not "socialists." Possessors of 
sentiment are not all sentimentalists and there 
is as much contrast between ordinary men with 
capacity for mystical feeling, and mystics like 
Suso and Boehme, as there is between men of 
wholesome sentiment and the sentimentalists. 

But in their extreme and frequently pathologi- 
cal religious development, the mystics have been 
characterized by a vividness of feeling and a sense 
of the infinite worth of life which makes them 
appear to have discovered the great secret of 
power and contentment. Many persons are ask- 
ing to-day for that secret. They crave a more 
vital, imaginative, and commanding way of life 
than our new science or our old traditions afford. 
Proof of this may be seen in the strange temples of 
Oriental cults which spring up in our cities; in the 
spread of many faith-cure and psycho-therapeutic 
types of religion; and in the increase, if not the 
over-elaboration, of ritualism and symbolism on 
every hand. 

158 



THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 

But there is a simpler, more vital, and more 
adequate way of meeting this need. Emerson has 
led thousands to its satisfaction. He has accom- 
plished it for many in the essay on " Compensa- 
tion" where he shows by the " tools in our hands, 
the bread in our basket, the transactions of the 
street, the farm and the dwelling-house," that 
there is a "ray of divinity" in our life, and that 
we can discern " the present action of the Soul of 
this world, clean from all vestige of tradition." 
And so, he hoped, "the heart of man might be 
bathed by an inundation of eternal love." He set 
forth in new parables and proverbs the great con- 
ception that every act and item of our life bears 
the nature of the whole. "The world globes itself 
in a drop of dew." "Ineffable is the union of man 
and God in every act of the soul . . . forever and 
ever, the influx of this better and universal self is 
new and unsearchable. Ever it inspires awe and 
astonishment." But it is especially in noble ac- 
tion that man feels the infinite values of existence. 
"In a virtuous action I properly am" he says; 
"in a virtuous act I add to the world." It is an 
interesting illustration of Emerson's appreciation 
of the moral life as the way of serenity and union 
with the divine, that he selects from the volu- 
159 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

minous writings of Swedenborg, the mystic, this 
moral quality. "Swedenborg," he says, "elected 
goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling 
in all this labyrinth of nature. . . . Not fate, nor 
health, nor admirable intellect; none can keep 
you, but rectitude only, rectitude forever and 
ever." 

Christianity is fundamentally a matter of the 
moral life. All sentiment and piety and devotions 
are as nothing without that. Christianity builds 
a moral kingdom. It produces the fruits of right- 
eousness. It creates objective, practical, satis- 
fying relationships, and summons men to ever 
widening tasks. It knits together multitudes of 
believers from the past and the present and forms 
for the imagination and for the soul's deep affec- 
tion, the glorious company of the apostles, the 
goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army 
of martyrs — the holy Church throughout the 
world. The glory of this great Church is not her 
age or her wealth or her power, but her living 
zeal to carry still further into her own life and 
into the world, her Master's spirit of goodness 
and love. The Church maintains its most vigor- 
ous, vibrant life when it is engaged in stupendous 
tasks. It was lifted out of its provincialism of 
160 



THE MYSTICAL QUALITY IN RELIGION 

thought and feeling in the last century by the 
great missionary propaganda which still throbs at 
its heart. It is being vitalized anew in our own 
time by its endeavors toward the establishment 
of social justice and a world-wide brotherhood of 
man. The Church is offering to risk its institu- 
tions, its formal dignity, and its set services in the 
interest of human welfare, and in consequence it 
is being suffused more deeply than ever with true 
piety and a sense of the presence of God. 

The promise of the divine companionship is 
to an active, forward-striving Church. The com- 
mand and the promise are, "Go . . . and, lo, I 
am with you alway." It is as though Jesus were 
saying to the Church yet: Go, teach: build 
schools and colleges; go, heal the sick: found 
hospitals and laboratories, and dispensaries; go, 
love your neighbors : found settlements and peace 
societies and boards of arbitration and be a friend 
of man; go, preach the gospel: publish the poetry 
of love, dramatize the prodigal son and the good 
Samaritan and reveal to men the cross itself as 
the proof of the infinite compassion that throbs at 
the heart of the world, and the divine presence 
shall be with you, a pillar of cloud by day and a 
pillar of fire by night. 

161 



THE HIGHER INDIVIDUALISM 

Thus we may dare to hold that life and religion 
are far simpler and more satisfying than the 
mystics have believed. The God whom they 
sought afar and apart dwells near and within — 
nearer than breathing, nearer than hands and 
feet. And knowledge of this God requires no 
special sense or second sight. He walks forth in 
the light of day. The pure in heart see him in the 
beauty of the lilies and in the soul of man. Wise 
men read his laws in every fleck of dust and in the 
distant stars. He is here and now present in this 
pulsing life we live, the conscience and dream of 
our souls, the love and light of our hearts. Who- 
ever has truly beheld the Christ of history, or the 
ideal Christ in any man, has seen Him. Upon 
that vision he may rest his faith, and through it 
he may look out upon the world and find it new 
and glorious. 



THE END 



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